With InAVate EMEA celebrating its 10th birthday this year, Tim Kridel canvasses opinion from distributors, integrators, manufacturers and consultants about what they thought would be the biggest changes in pro AV over the next 10 years?
In the Jan/Feb edition of InAVate magazine Tim Kridel looked ten years into the future with a cross-section of the AV industry. As an online exclusive you can also read some more detailed viewpoints from some of the people he interviewed for the article.
In this article he hears from Gorkem Celikbilek, VP of Asimetrik
GC: We have a clear forecast on the market trends and shifts in the coming decade. We consider ourselves located in an emerging market, and serving countries with the same condition.
As for technology, we see that more compact and mobile solutions are coming in. Since video conferencing is becoming more available for regular people, corporate AV installations will be more common.
The market for PAVA ( Public Address and Voice Announcement ) is shrinking. There will be only major players, where we will see a dense market but with strong players, increasing the competition significantly and killing mid-size firms. Also, standardisation plays an important role in this. We see that MEA region must embrace American Quality Standards much more. We are not in the EU, but must comply with their standards where we can to benefit from the advantages.
Now we see a trend for interconnecting all building systems; starting from HVAC, Building Automation and Management, Pro AV, PAVA, CCTV, Network etc.
Clients want easier controls for much more complex systems. This is the main reason for pro audio distribution brands integrating with the networked systems. As a consequence, we see that we are a part of the building engineering more, and have the chance to design the architecture of the system, and sit on the big table alongside with building engineering firms.
With this progress in mind, and having security for pro AV systems as a priority, the market for services will grow bigger, and create more jobs combined with profit. Because designing the pro AV system alone will not be enough.
Emerging markets have major events in the future, in the past, we were a part of Mediterranean Games, Eurovision, European Games (Baku), etc. Now we see Expo, World Cup in the pipeline, which are much larger events, and will create numerous jobs depending on projects. It will be quite difficult for integrators to own up to installations as a whole, but the contractors will demand consolidations of several integrators, or will split the tenders.
Splitting the tenders is never a first choice, since it will create more paperwork for contractors, where they like to entrust the whole installation to a reliable partner, and never look back. This is the part where a distributor and/or integrator is valued.
This is the start of a major flow, where we see manufacturers like Harman and Music Group growing by acquisition, and impacting the market strongly. Distributors are the first ones to be effected, but integrators also play an important role in this. We believe that this polarisation in the brands market will cause the integrator market to do the same. There won’t be a pool of companies with variety, but strong competing giants signing up for tenders.
Other Q&As in the series:
Mocom
Hewshott International
Electrosonic
Cordless Consultants
Polymedia
Biamp