North American PERS market to more than double over the next 5 years

According to IHS, the North American market for Personal Emergency Response Systems (PERS) service is forecast to grow from $700 million in 2014 to $1.5 billion in 2019.

Oliver Philippou, senior analyst in the video surveillance and security services group at IHS, said the primary market drivers for this growth are a growing elderly population and the increased use of mobile PERS (mPERS).   

“PERS using traditional telephone lines remains the largest segment of the market. However, as the United States begins to move away from POTS-based communication in the home, home phones will be replaced by either voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) or cellular phones; limiting the number of potential in-home fixed customers,” Philippou wrote in a research note. “Furthermore, mPERS is predicted to attract younger users, meaning users are unlikely to transfer to a fixed product if they are already familiar with the more flexible mPERS products.”

Among other findings in a new IHS report include:

• Value-added services will offer considerable revenue growth. This is because additional services, including fall detection and medicine reminders, can increase a user’s monthly spend by 25–30 percent.
• IHS predicts that in the next 12–18 months, activity monitoring will be included as an mPERS value-added service. These products will provide general metrics including the number of steps taken and calories burned. This will be a by-product of the fall-detection function, which already records the user’s activity throughout the day.