Video Surveillance Market Poised to Grow to $46B

(Business News & Technology News, 19 Mar 2008)

The video surveillance market is poised for explosive growth, expanding from revenue of about $13.5 billion in 2006 to a remarkable $46 billion in 2013, according to market research firm ABI Research. Those figures include cameras, computers and storage, professional services, and hardware infrastructure: everything that goes into an end-to-end security system.

"We're at a key inflection point in the diverse video surveillance market, because we're moving from an analog-based industry to a digital one. A rising tide lifts all boats: the result is a multitude of opportunities for vendors," says ABI Research Vice President and Research Director Stan Schatt.

"Security" is the word on everyone's lips these days, but there is more to this dramatic market growth than that. Video surveillance finds uses in a variety of vertical markets such as retail, education, banking, transportation and corporate business. And it's not always about security: new facial recognition software can analyze shoppers' behavior within stores, for example, tracking eyeball movements as shoppers view product displays.

European video surveillance markets are more mature than those in North America, but massive deployments are also now taking place in North America and, in connection with the upcoming Olympics, in China.

The diversity of products and services required by the video surveillance market present challenges for individual vendors, which they are addressing through partnerships.

But while digital technology offers advantages—higher resolution, easier searching and retrieval, and more efficient storage—many of the traditional security resellers of analog equipment are not yet comfortable with digital, and a massive retraining effort is going to be required.

"This is a modern version of the California gold rush, except that people are bringing cameras instead of pickaxes and shovels," concludes Schatt.

Click here for more information on the study "Video Surveillance Systems" by ABI Research