Last month, we partnered with Almo Pro AV to create a comprehensive survey that asked you the AV community — users and integrators — to tell us what the state of the BYOD (bring your own device) and collaboration (insert your own definition here) market is.

The results?

Most importantly, nearly everyone in the AV market is participating, with over 60 percent integrators integrating at least one collaboration system per month. And more than half of you are installing five or more a month! Who’s leading the way in integrating collaborative systems? Education and government. Corporations seem to be a bit network-shy when it comes to AV.

But, what we found most interesting was the speed at which AV-over-IP has evolved into the mainstream of the AV marker. SVSi is leading the charge (how much so, we can’t share that data with you, yet, as it’s proprietary) but companies like lesser-known iMAGsystems are garnering some attention with their wider-than-average AV-over-IP product line. And, of course, Crestron is making push, along with Kramer, Atlona, ZeeVee and a few others — each barely registered, however, when measuring product sales. So, for now, Harman’s own SVSi is dominating the AV-over-IP landscape.

And, since over 55 percent of the AV integrators are already using some AV-over-IP products, AV-over-IP will move from an emerging market in 2017 to segment that we predict will be 5 to 8 percent of the total AV signal distribution segment of the systems market by the end of 2018.

When we asked about the current state of the collaboration market, the obvious leader was Barco – with over 15 percent of the total collaboration market-share and closely followed by Crestron and their AirMedia product line (note: AirMedia uses the same AWIND chip-technology used in mush of the ClickShare line). A surprise to some might be the rapid growth of the Mersive Solstice product in 2017 which captured nearly 10 percent of the market – up from less than 2 percent at the beginning of the year. The rest of the market sees Extron and Kramer, both at less than 10 percent and a plethora of other companies who make up the remaining 35+ percent of the market. Oh, and kudos to Epson and its BrightLink Pro for being THE ONLY collaboration display product to make the cut.

Of course, since Barco funded this survey, they wanted to know the industry’s overall satisfaction with ClickShare — no doubt, hoping to hold on to their market-leading position as they just started shipping their new 4K product, the CSE-800. Over 90 percent of ClickShare users and installers said they were at least satisfied with their choice with 67 percent saying they were “very satisfied” with ClickShare.

Here’s an infographic that tells you the highlights of our survey and, as the year 2018 moves along, we’ll share more data. But, for now, rest assured you will likely see more ClickShare domination, an emergence of AV-over-IP that will likely see some big players stake a claim to the network-based signal distribution market concept and we’re sure to see a lot of new IP-based products launched at February’s Integrated Systems Europe show as well as at June’s InfoComm and August’s Integrate shows!