As organizations across every industry become more digital as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, smart buildings are becoming an even larger opportunity for the AV industry than ever before.
That is according to Sean Wargo, senior director of market intelligence at AVIXA, who presented some illuminating market research at this week’s RISE Spotlight event on smart buildings. AV integrators are well equipped to seize the smart building opportunity, as many of the markets pro AV already serves make up some of the largest smart building customers.
According to Wargo, these are the largest smart building markets, with their annual revenue and compound annual growth rate (CAGR):
- Corporate: $52.0 billion, 5.9%
- Media & Entertainment: $37.9 billion, 7.8%
- Venues & Events: $28.0 billion, 7.6%
- Education: $22.4 billion, 4.7%
- Retail: $19.7 billion, 6.7%
- Government & Military: $16.1 billion, 7.3%
- Residential: $12.4 billion, 2.0%
- Transportation: $11.7 billion, 9.5%
- Hospitality: $8.7 billion, 5.9%
- Energy & Utility: $7.3 billion, 10.4%
- Healthcare: $5.4 billion, 5.4$
- Cinema: $3.1 billion, 5.3%
“As you look across the broad array of markets that pro AV serves – from corporate, media, entertainment, residential, transportation – it’s really everywhere,” Wargo says.
“And that’s the challenge – it’s not so much a specific market unto itself. It cuts across so many. It’s smart buildings, smart offices for corporate, residential communities, multifamily dwellings, smart hotels, etc.”

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Those solution areas and their revenue and CAGR include:
- Conferencing & Collaboration: $38 billion, 3.3%
- Learning: $33 billion, 3%
- Digital Signage: $31 billion, 7.5%
- Content Distribution & Media: $29 billion, 5.5%
- Security, Surveillance, Safety: $24.6 billion, 11.4%
- Live Events: $22.7 billion, 7.9%
- Performance & Entertainment: $22.3 billion, 5.3%
- Command & Control: $13.6 billion, 6.1%
- Simulation & Visualization: $12.8 billion, 7.5%
“So if you took a little bit across these, you might start to realize how large an opportunity this is for our pro AV,” Wargo says.
Within solutions are ingredient technologies, which Wargo defines as specific things like displays, audio devices, control systems, infrastructure, streaming media, storage and more. Those too are already very familiar to the pro AV industry.
As technology becomes more intelligent and interconnected to help IT departments, employees, facilities managers and more do their job and demand for these solutions rise as organizations rethink their digital strategy, the smart building opportunity for integrators will only grow.
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