Welcome to my 23rd annual Kayye’s Krystal Ball! I wonder if this will be my last … are you bored yet? To think I have been opining this column for 23 years is stunning to me. I am humbled by your loyal readership, and I continue to be amazed by how many of you read it (as well as how many of you tell me you use it to guide decisions on up-and-coming new companies and tech). Thank you for the support, #AVtweeps. #LOVE 💜 .

As I have explained each year, writing this requires me to stop and research anything new, evaluate the potential impact the product or tech will have on our market and then articulate it in a way that matters to readers. If you’re a regular reader of my content, you already know this, but for those who don’t: My Kayye’s Krystal Ball is an annual article in which I not only tell you what I think is going to happen in the AV, UCC and Digital Signage markets for the upcoming year, but I also look back and review the previous year’s predictions — sort of a scorecard of accuracy, if you will.

So, without further ado, I’ll start Kayye’s Krystal Ball: 2023 Edition by reviewing what I predicted would happen last year. I’ll state each prediction and comment on how well (or poorly) I did with my predictions. But, in case you’d like to read the 2022 predictions for yourself, the article is published here.

Author’s note: Kayye’s 2023 Krystal Ball Predictions was actually delivered as an Exertis Almo exclusive webinar earlier this week. So, if you prefer to listen/watch instead of read, go here— it includes a slide deck along with a recording of Gary’s live delivery of the webinar. 

Let’s Review My 2022 Predictions!

My first prediction for 2022 was that “supply chain issues would still hamper our ability to have a record year” with both sales and shipments of new products. You may recall that toward the end of 2021, many manufacturers made confident claims that normal inventory positions would resume some time in 2022. I challenged that. With the exception of a handful of companies (among them and one of the most vocal about not having issues was Aurora Multimedia) everyone was affected by supply chain slowdowns. This will continue well into 2023 but, the majority of it will be chip-based — rather than final inventory shortages.

That said, we WILL return to 90% normal supply by end of 2023. In the meantime, we will see the best product supply situation since the beginning of the 2020 pandemic.

Want to read the rest? Click here to read the full article on LAVNCH!