Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Whichever way you interpret (or use) AVIXA’s ‘registrants’ vs ‘verified attendees’ #InfoComm25 was likely the smallest InfoComm in either Orlando or Las Vegas** since 2015 (registrants) or 2010 (verified attendees).
Since 2015, Las Vegas has always had less attendance than Orlando the year before, usually with a Florida gain of just over a 1000, this time around saw 30,998 verified attendees (2025) vs 30,271 (2024) so an ‘increase’ of 727 over the previous year is nothing really to write home about.
- #InfoComm25 hosted 817 exhibitors from 97 countries (400,100 net square feet of exhibit space in the West Hall of the Orange County Convention Center)
- #InfoComm24 hosted 833 exhibitors from 125 countries (407,000 net square feet in the West and Central Halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center)
You can spin this (as many journalists did) as a “a modest decline on last year’s 833 exhibitors” BUT bottom line that is 16 (or more) exhibitors who decided NOT to exhibit this year, including the likes of LG and Samsung.
An increase of end-users was one bright spot, in 2024 in Las Vegas 29% described themselves as end users whereas this year there were 35%. Published figures for end user attendance are only available for the last two years BUT do show a good increase from 8,778 to 10,849. Orlando is however well known for attracting the Houses of Worship Community.
AVIXA made no comment on the decline in international attendance (down from 23% to 18%) in its post-show publicity but with what is going on in the world atm that was to be expected (there was much speculation prior to the event that there would be less attendance from Canada and Latin America and that does seem to have been the case).
Should AVIXA be worried? Yes, probably, the show is getting smaller. Most companies in the global space use (their sister show) ISE at the beginning of the year to launch new products and introduce innovation. On top of that, ISE is getting to be three times the size of the ‘regional’ AVIXA events in both Orland and Las Vegas. This year ISE saw 85,351 unique visitors from 168 countries (and a 110,540 registrants).
Add in the fact that LG and Samsung both did not exhibit but were still allowed to have meeting rooms which by the way upset a lot of the other larger exhibitors (why go to the expense of a proper booth, bring in screens and displays, make content etc. whe you can just as easily put plywood round your ‘stand’ area and have some chairs and setup some simple meeting spaces?) AND that unless something very fundamental in the USA changes, international attendance may continue to decline over the next few years and you have at best, a small regional show.
** Not including the 2021 Covid show with 7,335 attendees that never should have happened.
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