Last week, our leadership team attended the AHR expo — a major HVACR event in North America, spending time on the floor and in meetings with product, innovation, and service leaders across commercial HVACR.
We already work closely with OEMs in this space, but events like AHR are valuable for a different reason. They offer a concentrated view into how priorities are shifting — not in slide decks, but in real conversations.
This year, what stood out wasn’t a new technology announcement. It was an alignment. Across multiple discussions, three priorities consistently surfaced for 2026:
Not as separate initiatives — but as connected parts of the same system.
Most OEMs are past the “should we connect?” phase. The focus now is impact: How do we reduce failure impact across distributed fleets?
For commercial HVACR assets — RTUs, chillers, AHUs — downtime escalates quickly. Spoilage, tenant complaints, production loss, compliance risk. The financial consequences are real.
Predictive maintenance is no longer being framed as AI layered on top of telemetry. It’s being framed as:
One theme came up repeatedly: data without workflow integration doesn’t change outcomes. OEMs are increasingly looking at predictive maintenance as part of loss prevention and service strategy, not just product differentiation.
Another clear message: service channels are strategic.
Commercial HVACR OEMs depend heavily on dealers and service partners, yet many still struggle with:
In one deployment discussed, as many as 60-70% of connected devices were never activated in the field because onboarding was too complex. Dealer apps, and especially frictionless provisioning, are becoming operational control layers.
When technicians can provision devices quickly, access live asset data, and follow structured service workflows, OEMs gain more than efficiency. They gain traceability, consistency, and real feedback loops into product development.
Commercial HVAC systems are among the largest electrical loads in buildings. They operate continuously — and they drift.
In addition to how efficient equipment is at installation, there are conversations around how efficiency is managed over its lifecycle.
Recurring themes included:
Energy optimization is being treated less as a sustainability narrative and more as economic control.
Interestingly, many linked this directly back to predictive maintenance. Efficiency degradation is often the first sign of mechanical issues. Addressing it early protects both energy costs and equipment health.
What stood out most was the integration mindset. Predictive maintenance, dealer enablement, and energy optimization are increasingly being designed together.
When combined:
Connectivity, in this context, is no longer about dashboards. It’s about building a digital layer around the infrastructure — one that protects uptime, improves service economics, and turns energy performance into a managed variable. That was the most consistent signal coming out of AHR this year.
At Blynk, this convergence is exactly what we are building for.
Predictive insights must connect directly to service workflows. Dealer enablement must live in the same operational layer as monitoring and diagnostics. Energy optimization requires continuous, structured telemetry and control.
As OEMs move from pilots to scaled deployments, the focus is shifting from adding features to building durable digital infrastructure around their equipment.
That shift — from connectivity as a feature to connectivity as operational foundation — is where we are actively working with the industry today.
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