If the pandemic taught organizations how to deal with the fragility of global supply chains, current geopolitical and trade tensions are testing even the best manufacturing and logistics practitioners. While it’s tempting to simplify the process by increasing domestic production, "Made in America" is easier said than done, especially when you’re in tech. Not only does it cost more, but it also requires a knowledgeable workforce that, at least for now, just doesn’t exist.

The Reshoring Initiative, based in Sarasota, FL, has a mission to bring manufacturing—and more specifically, well-paying manufacturing jobs—back to the United States. In its 2025 Reshoring Survey Report, published in collaboration with talent acquisition firm Regions Recruiting, it makes the argument for investment in training and education to fulfill the need for skilled workers.

“The success or failure of training millions of workers could skew the outcome of U.S. reindustrialization momentum in either direction,” the report stated. Without a reshoring surge, it forecasted 2.1 million manufacturing jobs will go unfilled by 2030. That carries with it an estimated $1 trillion loss to GDP.

One of the ways to train manufacturing labor is through apprenticeships, observed Harry Moser, president and founder of the Reshoring Initiative. He also argued that industry needs to do a better job of marketing its career opportunities to a culture that still views a university degree as the only ticket to a successful life.

“We’ve got to convince kids and their parents that they don’t have to go to college,” Moser said. “They can get training instead of more education—or both. There’s a route, through an apprenticeship, to make more than the average Ph.D.”

The Trouble with Tech

In an ideal world, there are considerable benefits to domestic production of AV systems.

“Assuming it’s possible, the advantages would be having supply chains that are closer to the customer, reducing transportation time and creating more efficiencies,” said Ed Brzytwa, VP of international trade at the Consumer Technology Association, headquartered in Arlington, VA. However, for Brzytwa, that possibility is slim when it comes to consumer electronics.

To gain an understanding of the domestic manufacturing landscape for Pro AV, one can look to consumer electronics. Back in 2023, prior to current tariff complications, CTA published “Building a Resilient U.S. Consumer Technology Supply Chain” in collaboration with Kearney, a management consulting firm.

While the study argues it’s wise to decrease the United States’ dependence on China and Taiwan for tech components such as communications and AV equipment, computers, and semiconductors, manufacturing them at home isn’t realistic. "It may be conceptually and politically attractive to think about reshoring most or even all of the consumer technology supply chains to the United States, but it’s simply not practically or economically feasible given the scale and complexity of required resources and underlying economic production structures,” the report stated.

The raw materials required to fabricate these products aren’t available in the United States, and there is a significant labor shortage. CTA and Kearney estimate that bringing consumer electronics manufacturing to America would require a $500 billion investment and a tenfold increase in workforce, one that would cost significantly more than overseas labor.

“You need a workforce that’s willing to put in the hours to be skilled and then to execute on those skills,” Brzytwa said. “I think, in the short run, that’s not likely to happen unless there’s a significant effort by stakeholders in the United States to make it happen.”

The U.S. also lacks the infrastructure necessary to support consumer technology manufacturing, noted Steve Koenig, vice president of research at CTA. “Our analysis showed that it would take a decade-plus to really start to build back,” he said.

It’s also difficult for companies to commit to large-scale construction in the U.S. when the rules of trade are in constant flux. “It’s hard to make long-term business investments and plans when you just don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Ted Romanowitz, principal consultant at Futuresource Consulting, an advisory firm based in St. Albans, England.

Plus, truly supporting domestic electronics manufacturing extends beyond the construction of fabrication facilities that produce semiconductors. “This is also about upgrading electrical infrastructure, and [opening] more deep sea ports and railways. It would really be across the board,” Koenig said.

'Multi-Geography' Solution

This isn’t to say that America must remain dependent on China and Taiwan. Instead, CTA and Kearney promote a “multi-geography” collaboration between the U.S. and its treaty allies and trade partners such as France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, the U.K., and Vietnam.

“I think there’s an underappreciation, generally speaking, of how integrated supply chains are in the technology industry across the world,” Brzytwa said. “No one country is self-reliant for the production of technology products. There’s got to be an array of supply chain relationships across countries in order to make any kind of technology manufacturing happen.”

However, in a hostile trading climate, this can be difficult to achieve. “Just because you have some trade problems with those countries doesn’t mean they’re adversaries,” Brzytwa argued. “It means that you have to work through those problems like in any relationship.”

Being allied requires countries to tolerate some level of interdependence. “And for me anyway, that means providing for tariff relief on imports from those countries, particularly the inputs that are made in those countries," Brzytwa argued. "It doesn’t make a lot of strategic sense to restrict that trade with our historic allies and key aligned trading partners that share our values.”

Workplace meetings have undergone a physical and cultural transformation during the past five years, both in terms of their location and the technology used to facilitate them. Modern working habits and technological advancements have contributed to the rise of the meeting room as a high-growth vertical for audio visual, unified communications and collaboration technologies. Further to this, employees are increasingly meeting in other areas of the office with major implications for the vendors involved in these markets.

The development of modern technologies serving to increase teamwork—and businesses pursuing top-down policies to create collaboration-focused spaces—are fundamentally altering the modern workplace. This evolution is exposed in the Futuresource 2018 Corporate Meeting Room End User Report.

Want to learn more about collaboration? Free webinar: bit.ly/AVcollab

One key area of change relates to the physical makeup of meeting rooms. Here, the number of large meeting spaces has decreased during the past two years, predominantly due to the macro trend toward smaller, faster, more flexible meetings. Typically, large meeting rooms are being repurposed for smaller meeting spaces and, with over a quarter of companies looking to add additional meeting rooms over the next three years, the overall total addressable market of meeting rooms is expected to surge. Businesses are very keen to promote top-down policies that utilize space more efficiently and promote smaller, more collaborative sessions among workers.

Manufacturers have also been quick to respond to these changes, producing a raft of collaboration technologies designed for smaller meeting room and huddle spaces that are already seeing good traction in the market.

Another clear indication that the traditional meeting is undergoing fundamental change is the type and variety of products that are now being used in these spaces. This development is most evident when we look at meeting room budgets, which have grown increasingly diversified across product categories. While the meeting traditionally was the mainstay of telephone and display technologies, we are now seeing that as the size of a meeting room grows, there is a significant increase in spending on goods other than displays, such as audio, collaboration devices and control products. The distribution of budgets is highest in large meeting rooms, where over 60 percent of funds are spent outside of display technologies. This diversification is not only evidence of the growing importance of a wider set of technologies but also the increasing complexity of the meeting room market.

Read the 2018 Integration Guide to Collaboration.

Demographic change and budget diversification are not the only significant changes happening to the meeting, with employee habits and practices also undergoing a cultural transformation. With more employees working from home, and the increased ability to work in multiple locations geographically or in different areas within an office, workers are now much more flexible with where they are working and who they are working with. Employers have been keen to develop more informal meeting spaces in step with these modern flexible working habits and, with 20 percent of meetings now being held in locations such as kitchens/eating areas, breakouts rooms and receptions/foyers, it is no surprise that 43 percent of companies surveyed as part of this research state they are investing in dedicated technology for these spaces.

With dramatic changes happening in the corporate meeting room, technology providers are meticulously following the evolving demands of the modern workplace and how employees work with one another. This market presents both an exciting opportunity for growth but ample room for failure and, with culturally diverse variations in how employees work with one another, Futuresource’s Corporate End User Study provides the most comprehensive guide to the corporate meeting room and the nuances of this rapidly evolving marketplace.

Anthony Brennan is a research analyst at Futuresource Consulting.

Mixer consoles, devices that blend together multiple sound sources, continue to experience a customer shift towards low-end products, cannibalizing the mid-range market. That’s one of the key takeaways from a new report released by Futuresource Consulting's pro audio team.

“As the march of technology continues, low-end mixer consoles have evolved into highly advanced pieces of equipment,” said Reid Rasmussen, associate consultant at Futuresource. “They far out-class and outperform their predecessors of just five years ago. Today, low-end consoles can provide much of what a mid-range console used to deliver, compelling buyers to purchase low-end solutions to meet their mid-range needs.”

Futuresource research shows that suppliers and channels alike have been taken by surprise by the strength of the market's low-end. Many remain unsure of the nature of certain segments buying the hundreds of thousands of units shipped.

Mixer Market Still Posting Profits

Despite this mid-range squeeze-out, the total market remains buoyant, valued at $724 million last year and on track to deliver a value growth of 5.3 percent CAGR, according to the Futuresource report. Verticals explored in the report are touring and rental, portable sound, broadcast and studio, installed leisure, and installed commercial.

“Looking to the high end of the market, we’re seeing a lot of saturation,” said Rasmussen. “Here, it’s mostly about replacements and upgrades, though there are still opportunities within broadcast, touring, concerts, and large events.”

Analogue Giving Way to Digital

The highest price point at which analogue consoles can be sold has always been limited by the low-end at which digital consoles are priced. With digital console prices falling, the market for analogue consoles continues to shrink. End users replacing their existing analogue equipment with digital is of course another factor contributing to accelerated growth at the low-end of the market.

As new products have been introduced, they've revolutionized the mixer console market, with Behringer's X32 a strong example of a product that has redefined customer expectations for an entire market. When launched a little over five years ago, its fully featured 32-channel 16-bus specification, with a range of built-in effects and a comprehensive list of features, set new expectations for what can be provided at a relatively low price point.

“Fast forward to 2018 and our channel research shows that customers expect new console products to do far more for less,” said Rasmussen, “delivering more features, more plug-ins, effects built-in rather than outboard, more input and output channels, DSP included, and more busses. All at the same price or for less.

“With potential new market entrants looking to make quick advances and gain market share, the future landscape will be peppered with challenges and potential disruptions.”

Mixing on Glass

As technology progresses, professional mixing is heading towards tablets and smartphones. Termed "mixing on glass", these software-based mixers are opening up a new avenue of competition, with vendors like Slate Media Technology and Waves blazing a trail in this niche market. However, mixing on glass doesn’t depend on software alone, there is still a need for physical input and output capabilities, and an opportunity for existing vendors to move into this market as it gains momentum.

“As with other elements of the audio market, mixer consoles are taking a financial hit from the pervasiveness of video,” said Rasmussen. “When audio products compete for budget dollars with video, more often than not, video prevails. Combine this with stiff competition and heightened customer expectations, mixer brands need to play it smart and keep their cool in what, despite the odds, continues to be a profitable sector of the audio industry.”

Growth in the global LED display market accelerated strongly in 2017, to reach a sales value of $5.3 billion. The Americas region reached a key milestone in its development, surpassing $1 billion for the first time.

The LED display industry is riding on the crest of an exciting wave of technological innovation, with kaleidoscopic channel and competitive dynamics.

This latest Futuresource report provides strategic supply chain intelligence by covering the full range of LED display options as well as technological, competitive, and channel-related forces that have not only played an important role in today’s LED marketplace, but also shows what one can expect over the coming years.

Read more about LED displays in The Integration Guide to Video Walls.

Technological Milestone

“The introduction of MicroLED by Sony in 2016 caused a great stir of excitement in the industry, but it was thought to be a measure of what was possible, not what was viable in the near term,” said Chris McIntyre-Brown, associate director at Futuresource Consulting. “However, this year has seen far more buzz around new chip-on-boards (COB) solutions, MiniLED, and glue-on-board. All offer different benefits, but it is really the potential of MiniLED that has the industry excited. Troublingly though, are the lack of standards around MiniLED, MicroLED, and indeed the LED industry as a whole. This is creating confusion—and that certainly needs to be addressed.”

Competitive Landscape

In this report, Futuresource has ranked and categorized vendors into distinct groups based on their strengths including brand awareness, product portfolio, and how they behave in this quickly evolving market. Futuresource stated that most vendors enjoyed growth in 2017 but with varying degrees of success. There are a myriad of factors dictating the degree of success across the competitive landscape, but for those few that have been particularly impressive, the capacity and pressure to fulfil large production seems to underpin their momentum.

The LED market has also witnessed strong merger and acquisition activity in recent years, with display vendors looking to access new technologies, increase their geographical footprint, or diversify their customer bases. Futuresource expects to see this activity continue in the coming years as the market matures.

“An area to watch will be the new entrants launching LED products, typically coming from other areas of the visual display market,” McIntyre-Brown said. “Indeed, it is increasingly rare to find a professional display vendor without LED in its range—although there are still a number of heavyweights in adjacent display areas yet to enter.” Futuresource also expects service, support, and localization to become more important with established international display brands expected to grow in stature.

What Comes Next?

The LED industry is full of promise with Futuresource maintaining its aggressive growth forecasting out to 2022. It is now almost impossible to find a vertical market or end application where LED displays haven’t been optimized for both indoor and outdoor applications, and this is for good reason. “The industry is poised to take the next step in technological advancement and with that we see the LED display community beginning to wonder just how much share it can take from the giant that is the LCD industry,” McIntyre-Brown said.