Las Vegas, NV (June 18, 2026)—At Wednesday’s AVIXA Press Lunch, Mike Sullivan-Trainor, industry analyst, AVIXA, delivered the State of Pro AV: AI, Convergence, and the Next Phase of Growth. While he admitted that Pro AV, much like all industries, is facing global challenges, the industry is alive and well, with growth expected to continue well into the future.
Sullivan-Trainor referenced the book The Experience Economy. While the authors of the book, Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore, took an economic approach, Sullivan-Trainor said there was plenty to take away for the Pro AV industry as an enabler of experiences, not just in corporate and education verticals, but events as well. Sullivan-Trainor turned his attention to three aspects of the new experience economy, what he called shock-proof growth from consumer demand, the convergence of Pro AV and Broadcast, and operational AI.
The resiliency of the industry was something Sullivan-Trainor would reference throughout his near-hour long talk. “Pro AV buyers remain resilient, enabling suppliers and integrators to continue to grow revenue,” he said. “While the pace has slowed down from 5.4% to 3.9%, the growth remains ahead of GDP in most countries.
“Consumers and enterprises will continue to sustain spending on audio and visual despite economic fluctuations,” Sullivan-Trainor concluded. “Users are looking to differentiate experiences and experiences are driven by Pro AV.”
What used to be the CEO and C-level executives is no longer the case, as every department wants to have production quality available not just for sales and marketing, but internal communications. He showed that corporate (34.5%) and government (32.3%) led the way in broadcast production room adoption, with education pulling up the rear at 19%. It is a time where we need to increase the quality of experience with such things as real-time graphics, virtual sets, XR layers, and augmented reality integration. He turned to a focus on AV over IP as standardizing IP video democratizes production and broadcast of content while maintaining reliability and signal integrity.
Lastly, Sullivan-Trainor shifted to the hottest buzzword on the show floor: AI. While users are quickly adopting to AI, there is still a long way to go. From meeting rooms to classrooms to even stages, AI is clearly adding value. In AVIXA’s Business Index Pool, 65% of Pro AV users said they use AI at work, with 27.7 % using it at least weekly and 37% using it occasionally. When it comes to what type of AI is being used, 70% are using Generative AI. However, Sullivan-Trainor pointed out, the Agentic AI revolution is upon us, and there is certainly a lag in Pro AV.
Companies that have some sort of AI policy jumped from 31% to 47% in the past year, while those that have no policy at all decreased from 48% to 36% over the same span. There is no AI-specific AV security framework, though frameworks like NIST are being used in the interim but provide incomplete coverage leading to several challenges, including limited guidance for integrators. However, in the last year, company funding of AI for employees increased more than 60%, showing that productivity benefits are gradually beginning to outweigh the risks of deploying AI.
AI has the biggest impact in business’s operations efficiency. “End users will expect AI to be fully embedded to enable automated, adaptive, on-demand, personalized experience,” Sullivan-Trainor concluded.