What ASSA ABLOY’s Gunnebo Deal Means for the Entrance Control Market
Key Highlights
- ASSA ABLOY’s Gunnebo acquisition expands its reach beyond the door into pedestrian throughput and entrance control.
- Lee Odess says the deal strengthens ASSA ABLOY’s competitive position while offering large integrators a broader single-vendor portfolio.
- The acquisition represents hardware convergence and greater scale, but questions remain about how entrance automation will ultimately integrate with access control software.
Access control industry analyst Lee Odess says the Gunnebo deal gives ASSA ABLOY greater control over pedestrian throughput, extending its reach beyond the door and further into the customer’s high-traffic, high-security path.
ASSA ABLOY’s planned acquisition of Gunnebo Entrance Control gives the global access solutions provider considerably more than another collection of door products, according to access control industry analyst Lee Odess.
Odess, founder of The Access Control Collective (TACC), told SecurityInfoWatch the transaction extends ASSA ABLOY’s reach further into the movement of people through secured environments by adding Gunnebo’s speed gates, mass transit gates and security revolving doors.
“The biggest strategic advantage is scale and control over the pedestrian throughput point, not just the door,” Odess said.
Gunnebo Entrance Control employs approximately 670 people and operates manufacturing facilities across Europe, the U.S. and Asia. The business, which generated roughly $174 million based on current exchange rates, will become part of ASSA ABLOY’s Entrance Systems Division following completion of the transaction.
Odess sees similarities between the Gunnebo transaction and ASSA ABLOY’s 2024 acquisition of SKIDATA, which expanded the company’s presence in parking access and management.
“It’s the same playbook ASSA ABLOY ran with SKIDATA in parking: consolidating adjacent physical infrastructure to own more of the customer’s high-traffic, high-security path,” he said.
Strengthening the entrance control portfolio
From a competitive standpoint, Odess said the acquisition strengthens ASSA ABLOY against Boon Edam and other specialized entrance control providers, particularly in transit and critical infrastructure applications. In those environments, he noted, speed gates and security revolving doors are often specified as components of a larger security system rather than purchased simply as commodity hardware.
The expanded portfolio also potentially gives ASSA ABLOY a stronger proposition for security integrators looking to consolidate the number of manufacturers involved in large projects.
“It also rounds out a single-vendor story, identity credential, door hardware and now pedestrian throughput, that appeals most to large integrators trying to cut vendor count,” Odess said.
He also pointed to what he sees as a lack of recent product development at Gunnebo and suggested the acquisition could provide an opportunity for change.
“There’s been a lack of innovation and development at Gunnebo so maybe now it will get what’s needed,” Odess said.
Hardware convergence, for now
Despite the broader portfolio implications, Odess cautioned against viewing the acquisition as evidence that physical security’s hardware and software markets are converging at the same pace.
“This deal is convergence at the hardware layer, not the software layer,” he said. “ASSA ABLOY is buying physical infrastructure that surrounds access control, not software assets.”
For Odess, the more consequential question is what happens next as the traditional access control perimeter extends beyond the door. Entrance automation, he said, ultimately will need to become part of the same software environment managing locks and other access control hardware rather than remain a separate hardware category optimized within a hardware company.
He said the industry’s bigger convergence question is how entrance automation eventually gets pulled into the same software stack as locks and other access control hardware.
“Right now this represents ‘more hardware, more scale,’” Odess said. “It doesn’t yet answer ‘more software, more scale.’ Maybe it will.”
About the Author
Rodney Bosch
Editor-in-Chief/SecurityInfoWatch.com
Rodney Bosch is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com. He has covered the security industry since 2006 for multiple major security publications. Reach him at [email protected].