Camera craze continues amid COVID

With all the negativity that the COVID-19 pandemic has bred, I find it encouraging and refreshing to see all the positive movement within the industry when it comes to the video surveillance camera market. As you probably heard, Motorola Solutions acquired Pelco, Inc. for $110 million in cash (not a bad chunk of change there!), and ADT and Google partnered to dominate the smart home market, so there’s almost an endless number of video camera applications here as more consumers are embracing the work from home lifestyle, putting even more emphasis on home/residential security. 

Perhaps this is just the first of significant acquisitions and partnerships within the video surveillance camera market that we’ll see in the near future, but one thing is for sure … the video surveillance camera market will experience growth through 2025 as forecasted by IDC. This is due to the increasing adoption of smart camera systems and analytical software that enables use in a variety of uses beyond just surveillance. 

“The worldwide video surveillance camera market will grow to $44 billion by 2025, up from $23.6 billion in 2019, with a five-year CAGR of nearly 13 percent.” — IDC

IDC’s video surveillance and vision application practice follows the application of machine vision that augment physical security, and includes: 

• Data protection coverage beginning and ending with stored data or carried by an organization’s IT infrastructure;
• Protection of data before it becomes data; protecting intellectual property that people carry around with them by protecting the people; and
• Physical security of areas people occupy, including exposure to biological threats like COVID-19, which is critical to companies that depend on the introduction of innovative new services and products to drive revenue generation.�

While greater detail can be found in IDC’s report, “Worldwide Video Surveillance Camera Forecast, 2020-2025,” here are some key takeaways of upmost interest to most security professionals: 

• The North American market is still the top consumer of video surveillance cameras, followed by China;
• Consumer video surveillance cameras present 32 percent of the world total, currently, largely as a result of home security systems and mobile cameras;
• The blacklist of Chinese camera manufactures by the U.S. government will not slow down market growth, but rather, open the market to many smaller camera producers; and
• The use of advanced analytics (e.g., AI) to enable applications (e.g., facial recognition) may trigger regulations which could impede market growth.�

My thoughts? With an estimated 770 million surveillance cameras installed around the world and with the coronavirus practically demanding a touchless world, video surveillance cameras that are integrated with other solutions that can accomplish things such as not allowing physical access to someone who didn’t use hand sanitizer prior to attempting entry; contact tracing; people counting to ensure social distancing; etc., I think will always be a necessity in our modern world. The more solutions a video surveillance camera can offer to solve end-user pain points, the more this market will continue to flourish.