What will we see at InfoComm? I can think of no year in long history of the InfoComm show that’s had me thinking first about the market itself, than this year. While still exhibiting healthy growth, why does the pro AV market feel different? Let’s start at a 40,000 ft view of the market – but it wouldn’t be June and it wouldn’t be fun if we were not landing soon at InfoComm Las Vegas.

A number of the big trends in the AV integration market this year are around what I’d call perennial issues: shrinking margin on AV gear, shortage of skilled labor, and the often shifting position of AV in the larger IT universe. Can we keep calling them “trends,” given that we’ve been doing that for 20 years? Each year they manifest themselves a bit differently, but they seem baked into the market. Are they? How do you work around them? I’ll answer that by addressing the technology/marketing dilemma that both stems from those trends and adds new  challenges. That dilemma, or better said the crossroads at which AV integrators and gear providers stand today, is what Sean Wargo, the head of market research at AVIXA, describes as a “volume vs. value” dilemma in the corporate AV market. And it’s not an economist’s academic exercise, in fact it leads directly to what you’ll see – if you look in the right places – on the show floor at this year’s InfoComm in Vegas.

You can see Sean and Peter Hansen of AVIXA talk about the corporate market in 2024, here.

I’ll let those economists speak for themselves – it’s well worth checking it out.

Here’s my take on the volume vs. value debate as we get ready to head to InfoComm (not just for the corporate vertical but in most of the verticals).