Today at ISC West 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada, I had the chance to hear from IMS Research about their reports and forecasts for the security industry. Without entirely reproducing their research in my blog, I want to give you the highlights.
First up is 2009.
In the Americas, here's how differing industries compared in a rough financial year. The semiconductor market was down 30%; industrial automation was down 15%; vehicle production was down 33% and consumer technology was down 6%. Despite those significant downturns in many major industries, the electronic security industry was down only 0.2%. Basically, that means our industry stayed flat during 2009.
Also in 2009, IMS saw network video up 25% and analog video down 7%. They saw a terrible year for analytics companies. While analytics was having trouble, megapixel video surveillance had a good year, even as HD emerged as a potential format of choice. Megapixel could even outpace "standard resolution" IP video usage by 2012 or 2013 based on what IMS saw in 2009.
Now to the future...
In 2013, in the Americas, video surveillance is going to be 43% of the total physical security systems market; that means a huge increase in terms of video's role in the overall market. Fire will be 20% (that's down from current market share per IMS); intrusion will be 11.2% (also down in overall marketshare); and access control will be 7.8% (again, that's down in overall marketshare -- a loss chiefly attributed video's strong growth rather than any failing in the access control market).
In 2010 (since that's the year we're dealing with now), IMS is forecasting a large number of mergers and acquisitions, which they think will happen because the capital funding for such purchase is finally coming back. They're expecting 2% growth in North America for security products as a whole, a growth number that pales in comparison to a 15.2% growth forecast for security products in China/India. While North America isn't going to see the banner year that China and India will see, it certainly is better than what IMS is forecasting for Europe -- which is a -4.8% decline in overall revenues attributed to the sale of security products.
The tipping point for when IP video takes over analog video in sales is going to be pushed back a year thanks to the bad economy of 2009; now it is forecasted to be 2013 or 2014 when that transition happens. And finally, IMS believes that video surveillance vendors will only continue to fund improvements in analog video technology for another 2 or 3 years before all R&D effort is turned away from analog.
That's the numbers in a nutshell; I hope they can improve your understanding of your own business' industry.
-Geoff
