A New Breed of Conferencing Products Showcase Explosive Potential for the Future

COVID-19 has totally shaken up the workplace. For many of us, our homes became our meeting room overnight, bringing with it a whole set of new challenges in enabling effective communication and collaboration. Whilst remote working has had a sharply depressive impact on the traditional WPS hardware market, a whole new breed of products and peripherals has erupted, demonstrating explosive potential for the future.  

“The traditional WPS hardware market experienced an incredibly tough year, with volumes dropping by about a third,” commented Kane McKenna, Information Analyst at Futuresource Consulting. “However, on the upside, the emergence of new products combining traditional Wireless Presentations with the ability to wirelessly connect to in-room peripherals has come to the fore. These Wireless Conferencing (WCF) products show explosive potential for future growth, particularly in regions and verticals where video communication has been most heavily adopted”. 

In Futuresource’s latest Wireless Presentation Solutions Market Report, detailed coverage into these products and markets explores how traditional Hardware WPS, Software WPS, and the new breed of Wireless Conferencing boxes will shape the future of the meeting room.

Within this report, Futuresource Consulting discuss how, Wireless Conferencing will begin to strip volumes away from Wireless Presentation Solutions, particularly in the corporate vertical and the higher price segments. However, the transition from Wireless Presentation to Wireless Conferencing is not 1-1, as the emergence of Wireless Conferencing will boost and complement the development and future growth of combined product categories.

Verticals – Corporate and Education

Futuresource also sheds light on vertical forces at play within the declining corporate and education markets in 2020, as funds pivoted away from in-room technology and towards enabling remote working, as well as learning and preparing for a hybrid working future. Corporate was hit slightly harder than education; primary reasons for this were due to the uncertainty about how COVID-19 would affect company revenues, the future of the meeting room, and redirection of budgets toward enabling remote working and equipping employees at home.

The Rise of Wireless Conferencing

Conversely, wireless conferencing grew both in market volumes and value. “The growth prospects for WCF in the corporate vertical are bright indeed, with WCF being seen as a worthwhile investment to improve the experience of both remote and in-room meeting participants - key to enabling the hybrid working future,” added McKenna.

For more information regarding the Futuresource Wireless Hardware and Software  Presentation Solutions Report covering Americas, EMEA, APAC, China, please visit here.

About the author

Kane McKenna

Kane McKenna is a Research Analyst at Futuresource Consulting and is a member of the Collaboration and Signal Distribution team. He has worked on a broad range of reports covering wireless presentation, conferencing, meeting room, headset, and signal distribution technology. Kane joined Futuresource in January of 2020 and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Nottingham Trent University.