State of the Market Series

RSS

Security professionals reveal their thoughts on the security, monitoring and smart home markets.

It’s amazing how much can change in a year. Last year’s state of the market report on access control was released at the beginning of April, just as the coronavirus started to spread throughout the U.S., and much of the research that went into the report was done before COVID-19 was a real concern.

While 2020 affected the confidence of some in the video market, professionals remain optimistic going into 2021, with the increased adoption of new, more advanced technologies, and a potential end to the coronavirus pandemic in sight.

The typically steady fire and life safety industry saw growth in 2019, with overall global revenues surpassing $7.5 billion, according to David Gonzalez, research analyst, physical security and critical communications, Omdia, London.

Evaluating the state of any market is a tricky thing during a pandemic — things are changing daily; new technologies are being explored; the future is unknown; and it’s difficult to look back at the past clearly.

A continuing strong economy, end user desires to do more with their access control systems and increasing interest in new technologies, integrations and models all led to a positive outlook in 2019 and a general feeling of optimism for 2020, with a few notes of caution.

The video surveillance market is ripe with opportunity, according to sources. Many security integrators and manufacturers realized strong revenues for 2019 and are even more optimistic for 2020.