The year 2015 has been notable in several ways. Industry changes include a rise in Chinese manufacturers in the mid- to low-end market, more mobile devices providing video surveillance, and the rise of omnidirectional and higher-megapixel cameras.
Unexpectedly, the industry also saw an increase in popularity of do-it-yourself security systems and the speed with which Chinese companies saturated the marketplace with “good enough” products.
Omni-directional cameras
Oncam welcomes the trend in 360-degree and omnidirectional cameras, as our company saw a more than 40 percent growth in 2015 as compared with 2014, signifying increasing demand for our technology. However, it wasn’t without its challenges, including the hiring of talented engineers in this high-demand environment and the increasing pressure from Chinese manufacturers to drop prices.
IT security standards
Looking forward to 2016, the industry can expect to see higher megapixel cameras – and as the resolutions increase, the price of lower-resolution cameras will fall. We also will see more attention being paid to IT security because of high-profile cyber-attacks and data theft incidents, accelerating the adoption of IT security standards by system manufacturers and integrators. Additionally, the industry’s first cloud-focused conference will showcase the rise of cloud services and deployments for video surveillance and access control.
Changeover from analogue to IP systems
This is a great time to be in the security industry. The changeover from old analogue systems to IP systems is accelerating, creating demand for this technology. There are a lot of new video analytic technologies that are also gaining momentum for security and other applications, as well as new ways of using video – think body cameras for law enforcement and drone cameras. Still, the security industry will continue to see a certain degree of unrealised potential in the adoption of new technologies because of the training required for traditional security integrators. More and more are capable of designing, installing and supporting intelligent IP-based systems, but there is still a ways to go.
See the full coverage of 2015/2016 Review and Forecast articles here