Video Conference: Intelligent Iteration of Three Lives and Three Worlds

According to research data, shipments of mainland China’s commercial interactive tablet market reached 432,000 units in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 56.5%. The expected domestic market size of this product in 2021 will be close to 600,000 units, continuing to maintain rapid growth.

"In just two years from 2020 to 2021, the conference display market and interactive tablets have changed from supplements to real protagonists!" Industry insiders pointed out that this means that the conference display market and video conferencing industry are entering a new "development stage."

Video conferencing has gone through three rounds of technological revolutions

It has not been a short time since the conference equipment industry entered the era of "electronics and information" technology. Conference audio systems have been widely used for about eighty years. However, the process of getting "advanced technology" into ordinary commercial enterprises is very bumpy. The main reason is that the first-generation equipment is a "high-end professional AV product."

That is to say, audio and video playback, rebroadcast and dedicated network interconnection are the basic applications, and AV system standards and transmission methods are fully adopted. Even a "dedicated AV" network system must be set up. Such a first-generation video conferencing system will inevitably increase the "cost" of the enterprise: In addition, the operation and maintenance of the system itself are not convenient, and the market penetration is low, which further reduces the "application value" of the video conferencing system under the dedicated AV system - small and medium-sized enterprises can almost say no to it.

In the past history of video conferencing, most of the time it was a ‘black technology’ that could only be possessed by large multinational giants, large government units, and military systems. "However, the popularity of the Internet has changed this.

The video conferencing system that truly realizes popular applications is a new generation of products based on the Internet and IT systems: borrowing the Internet communication system, you no longer have to worry about "private network" communication. With the help of the low cost of IT technology and equipment, the problem of "convenient application and economic accessibility" of the product has been greatly solved. During this period, the most typical product was the conference projector product, with annual sales in the domestic market exceeding one million units.

The reason is very simple. The cost of a conference projector with highly integrated functions and IT-based application process is Only a few thousand dollars. This is a "cost" that every business can accept. Its data and information carrier is highly IT-based, allowing the simplest video conference room to require only one professional equipment such as a projector.

But, is IT-based video technology the end of innovation in commercial audio-visual applications in conference rooms? The answer is no: under the 2020 epidemic, the development of remote working and home working has brought video conferencing equipment into the "consumer electronics era."

After human society has entered the 4G era, smart consumer electronic devices represented by mobile phones have developed rapidly. Its technical level, supply chain capabilities, functions and ease of use surpass many traditional professional communication, audio-visual and computing equipment. In the household market, mobile video has replaced TV as the most popular content platform, and mobile games have replaced PC as the most popular game terminal.

The stay-at-home economy, home working, and remote working under the epidemic situation obviously require that video conferencing and "home audio-visual systems, whether it is smartphones or smart TVs, be seamlessly connected" - it is necessary Connecting smart consumer electronics devices will inevitably draw nutrients from the advancement of smart consumer electronics technology: at this time, video conferencing equipment has entered a new era of "consumer electronics".

It is inevitable to deprofessionalize and increase "ease of use" affinity

Many people are still talking about the transformation of video conferencing companies from AV to IT - but this is a problem of the past; the current problem is how the video conferencing industry can meet the 'consumer electronics' type of industrial change." Industry experts' views on the video conferencing industry have undergone a qualitative change.

In fact, when talking about more than 400,000 sets of "conference interactive tablets" in 2021, many people ignore another important fact: the market size of using "large-size home smart TVs" as basic display devices to replace traditional projectors to realize multimedia conference rooms is already very large.

For example, companies from various camps have entered the industry this year. For example, at the IFC exhibition, Philips displayed a conference tablet that can realize multi-party video conference linkage and support up to nine split screens to meet the needs of timely communication for multiple people in remote meetings. Allows the installation and application of a variety of third-party remote conferencing software. And by connecting computers, tablets, and mobile phones, you can quickly realize wireless screen projection, and support writing on 4 devices at the same time. Even if you are in a different place, you can share meeting content at the same time, bringing a convenient and efficient experience to academic and cultural exchange meetings.

"If you are professional and have a large budget, go for a professional conference tablet; if you have a limited budget of four to five thousand yuan, buy a 65-75-inch smart TV" - this is the most typical consumer choice in today's video conferencing market. Smart TVs here are of course "consumer electronic devices". And almost most products of interactive conference tablets use smart Android platforms, or use Windows and Android dual platforms.

At the same time, the frequent interaction with tablets and smartphones in application functions is directly a feature of the consumer electronics of video conferencing products on "applications". From the perspective of the next generation of Windows 11, the new Windows platform will also transform from "virtually running supporting APP programs" to "directly supporting APP" programs: PCs have "integrated" in the direction of "intelligent, consumer electronics" technology and applications, and video conferencing systems are unlikely to be alone.

"With the popularization of 5G technology and the expansion of the scale of IoT construction, AV equipment will definitely be included in large IoT platforms in the near future as a terminal for new video information transmission." . In this context, the video conferencing system will inevitably undergo a revolution from the AV network era to the IT Internet era; it will achieve a new upgrade from the IT Internet to the 5G AIOT network.

If you lean toward consumer electronics in terms of application experience, you can gain a higher affinity in application habits; if you lean toward consumer electronics in terms of technology, you can gain the huge innovation power and supply chain support of the consumer electronics industry; if you lean toward consumer electronics in terms of brand culture, you can more easily win the favor of customers and minimize the path to product arrival. ...

In this era, the consumer electronics of video conferencing systems is "further deprofessionalization" and the most fundamental increase in "ease of use" and "affinity". Whether consumer electronics companies enter the video conferencing market, or professional video conferencing companies absorb the "emerging technological power" of the consumer electronics industry, it means that the video conferencing industry is entering a new round of "qualitative change" stage. Video is everywhere, there is only one "video network"

What are the characteristics of video conferencing in the AV network era? It's network isolation! What are the characteristics of today’s video applications? It is ubiquitous and unprecedented social permeability! "