BuyersClub — Volume 5, Issue 20 — October 25, 2019
Latest headlines: Is Zoom the Apple of the AV industry? Gary Kayye thinks so. Scott Tiner also talks about 5G and Wi-Fi 6 and we have news from QSC, DTEN, LG, Poly, Avocor and more
October 25, 2019 | Volume: 5 | Issue: 20
This week I sat in on two strategy calls with clients in which we discussed sales, marketing and go-to-market strategy for new products that they are launching. Uniquely, the products from each of the clients provide services to both end-users and… end users.
I know that this is confusing, which is why I'm bringing it up. In each of the cases that we discussed, the client is marketing to the end user (the traditional AV/IT end user, i.e., you) and to the user that is actually utilizing the product. In the beginning of our conversations, we referred to each of these different users interchangeably with the same term: end user. Eventually we got around to saying "end-user customer" and the "product user," but it took a good 10 minutes to define the terminology so that both our team and the client team understood who we were each referring to.
I’ve noticed this problem as we focus more on user experience and ease of use in AV installations. What do we call the users of the technology — the employees of your company that are interacting with the technology? Because you aren’t the ones that are actually sitting in a conference room turning on the display or standing in the lobby in awe of the recent LED display installed to impress customers when they arrive in the building.
Let me know when the industry decides on a term! Or use this one: muggle 🙂
All of the eyes in AV were looking at Zoom yesterday. If you don’t believe me, look at the social stats of tweets and LinkedIn posts about Zoom Video Communications, Inc. in and around Zoomtopia 2019. The company dominated the AV-sphere yesterday, raking in about 55% of the total AV discussion online over the past 24 hours. These numbers are in line with Apple’s keynote numbers.
Two new wireless technologies are offering potentially important advantages for the audiovisual industry. 5G and Wi-Fi 6 have slowly become released and used over the past year. These technologies will both continue to spread in 2020 and beyond.
Zoom Video Communications just announced at Zoomtopia 2019 (its annual user conference) that major additions are coming to its software platforms. All of these will be become available on the platform by the end of January 2020.