Omdia's 82% figure puts resellers inside the meeting-room purchase
Telecom Reseller's Moshe Beauford reported the findings on September 25, 2026. Omdia's own report listing is dated a few weeks earlier. The listing, credited to principal analyst Prachi Nema, is titled "Video Conferencing Channel Survey: 2027 Market Intelligence Report", with a publication date of 04 Sep 2026. Omdia describes it as an "analysis of channel partner priorities, investment trends, and emerging opportunities in the evolving video conferencing market across four countries: UK, France, Germany, and the US." The full report is paywalled. Omdia notes that only individuals with an active subscription will be able to access the full article, and all other readers will be directed to the abstract.
The paywall limits how the headline number can be used. The survey groups three quite different positions into the 82%: full decision authority, strong influence and shared responsibility. The public material does not break the figure down by category, show the exact question wording, or give a year-on-year comparison. Nema said Omdia had not studied this part of the market before. "We never looked at this channel space," she told Telecom Reseller, calling partners "the glue between the end users and the vendors." So this is a first reading, not a measured trend. The headline's "more say" framing rests on the analyst's view of how the market has changed, not on an earlier baseline.
The survey sample is also specific: channel partners, in four Western markets. Resellers describing their own importance is not the same as enterprises confirming that they hand over decisions. Even so, a figure above four in five means most partners in the survey see themselves as participants in the purchase, not order-takers. That fits how multi-room deployments actually get built.
The platforms involved are the familiar ones. Telecom Reseller places the finding in a market where vendors compete around Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, Cisco Webex and other collaboration services. The partner types named are MSPs (managed service providers), VARs (value-added resellers), systems integrators and pro AV consultants, the specialists who design and install room audio-visual systems.
Teams Rooms certification turns room design into an integration job
Nema's explanation for the partner's larger role is that meeting-room devices no longer stand alone. Customers increasingly need to know how cameras, microphones and room systems fit into the wider collaboration setup. "The market now really wants to understand where that device sits in the ecosystem," she said.
Telecom Reseller gives Microsoft Teams Rooms as the example. Room hardware has to meet Microsoft's certification requirements. An enterprise rolling out video to hundreds or thousands of rooms also has to deal with different room sizes, acoustics, budgets and deployment constraints. Once the platform is chosen, the certified hardware list narrows the options. Each room then has to be matched to the right option on that list, and at scale that is design and project work.
Omdia's wider coverage of this market shows the same platform dependence. Its equipment tracker, which follows vendors such as Cisco, Huawei, Poly, Jabra, EPOS, Logitech, and others, contains market revenue and unit segmentation by room size, operating system, and platform. The firm also added total number of meeting rooms by room size, region, country, and vertical to its dashboard in April 2026. The analysts themselves treat room size and platform as basic categories for the market.
For a Windows or Microsoft 365 shop, this matters in practice. The partner that recommends a Teams Rooms configuration is effectively deciding how the certified hardware maps onto your real rooms: which device class goes into a huddle space, which into a boardroom, and how audio is handled in rooms with poor acoustics. If 82% of partners have some say in the decision, many organisations' room standards will partly come from the partner's preferred designs and vendor relationships. The public reporting does not say which Teams Rooms devices or certification tiers partners favour, or whether Microsoft's certification rules have changed, so those questions stay with the buyer.
AVIXA and Cavell data show the channel selling services, not boxes
Other industry research, which uses separate samples and methods, points the same way. AVIXA, the audio-visual industry association, published its 2026 Channel Survey in February 2026. Conferencing and collaboration was the strongest-performing solution area it tracked, with 53% of channel providers expecting growth in 2026. That is a forecast from respondents, not measured growth. AVIXA's sample was 202 respondents, nearly three-quarters of them from firms with fewer than 100 employees.
AVIXA's revenue split is more telling for buyers. Respondents said services made up 38% of revenue in 2025, against 36% for hardware, and integration and design led service revenue. For many AV partners, the design and installation work around the hardware is now as big a business as the equipment, or bigger.
Cavell, a communications research firm, reported that more than 70% of communications-technology sales go through partners, and described the channel as increasingly service-led as technology gets more complex. That figure covers communications technology in general, not meeting rooms specifically. Telecom Reseller is the account relied on here for it, and Cavell's method is not described.
Telecom Reseller also points to a recent ITPro analysis. It argues that standardised, certified meeting-room deployments let resellers move from one-off hardware sales towards continuing support and service relationships. That is a commercial argument aimed at resellers, not evidence of results. It does explain the partner's incentive: a repeatable, certified room template is easier to support under contract than a mix of one-off installations.
Nema summed up the change for vendors directly: "It's not the same market few years ago when it was pushing the devices into the market based on features." The gap between partners and customers matters here. Partners who earn more from services than from hardware may reasonably prefer designs that suit their support model. That is an inference from the revenue data, not an Omdia finding. It is still a good reason for IT to own the room standard itself.
Interoperability and Google Beam numbers measure interest, not deployment
The narrower Omdia figures need careful reading. According to Telecom Reseller's account, 20% of partners worldwide expressed interest in interoperability, rising to 25% among U.K. partners. Google Beam, Google's newer 3D video-communication technology, drew 10% interest globally and 13% in the U.K.
These are measures of stated partner interest. They say nothing about adoption, purchases or customer demand. A 10% interest figure for Beam does not mean one in ten rooms will get it, and 20% interest in interoperability does not mean four in five partners think it is unimportant. What the numbers do show is a ranking of partner attention. Established integration concerns, such as getting rooms to work across more than one platform, register more strongly than newer experiences. The U.K. is somewhat higher on both measures.
Nema also said partners are paying more attention to what meeting technology can deliver, including AI-driven features. The public reporting gives no percentage for AI interest. It shows that AI is on partners' agenda, not that AI room features are widely deployed or proven.
Interoperability deserves the most attention from Microsoft customers. Many enterprises standardise internally on Teams but still take external meetings on Zoom, Webex or Meet. How a room handles those meetings is exactly the kind of question a partner should answer before the room is installed, not after. Omdia's data does not show how well any product meets that need. It suggests that a minority of partners, larger in the U.K., already bring it up.
What this means for IT teams buying Teams Rooms and other room systems
If you are planning more than a handful of meeting rooms, choose the partner as carefully as you choose the hardware. Omdia's survey shows most partners expect to shape the purchase, and AVIXA's data shows why: design, integration and support are where much of their business now comes from. IT teams replacing a single room can treat this as background. Teams planning a standard for dozens or hundreds of rooms should bring IT, workplace or AV staff, and prospective partners together early, and make clear who owns the final room specification.
The questions below follow from the complexity described in the reporting. They are not Omdia recommendations:
- Ask any proposed partner to show how each recommended device fits your chosen platform, including Microsoft Teams Rooms certification where Teams is your standard.
- Require a written room template that maps room sizes and acoustic conditions to specific configurations, so the standard belongs to you rather than to the partner.
- Get clear answers on interoperability for external Zoom, Webex or Google Meet calls before committing, because it is a known concern for a significant minority of partners.
- Separate hardware pricing from installation, design and ongoing support in quotes, since services now make up a large share of AV partner revenue.
- Treat vendor or partner claims about AI room features as items to trial, because the public survey data shows partner interest, not proven results.
- Read Omdia's 82% figure as partners describing their own role across four countries, not as a measure of how every enterprise buys.
For Microsoft and the other platform vendors, the practical effect is that certification, partner training and partner feedback now affect which rooms get built, alongside marketing. Omdia's full dataset remains behind its paywall, and this is the first time the firm has studied this channel, so the next edition of the survey will be the first chance to see whether partner influence is actually growing. For enterprise IT the conclusion is already clear: the partner is helping to write the meeting-room standard, and the organisations that write it themselves keep control of how their rooms are built and supported.