HID: Mechanical Locks Dead In A Decade - Agree/Disagree?

Ethan sent this to me earlier:
According to survey results published by Assa Abloy and IFSEC, those in the 62% group that think mechanical keys are done in 10 years are "the views of a wide range of security professionals".
Do you agree? Vote:

Count me in the group that thinks the 10 year deadline is insane. Not even 100 years.
Any survey sponsored by a manufacturer of high-margin electronic access control (ie: Assa) is going to have a vested interest in promoting those products.
Brian, what does a basic mechanical lock and key cost?
For that prediction to be true, the cost differential would have to get quite close.
Btw, contrast:
- Their statement "Very few businesses will use the traditional lock and key 10 years from now"
- To "Very few businesses will install new traditional lock and key 10 years from now"
I am not sure if either will be true but the former is almost certainly false because it implies that in a decade the hundreds of millions of existing locks will be replaced.

This seems like the "analog" is dead argument, only based on a technology that is hundreds of years older and 1/10th the price per unit.
When I think of "businesses", I think of all the doors inside a building that have no need for access control, plus all the smaller stores that don't need every employee to have a key. It would seem that these doors could far outweigh the commercial doors where employees have access badges.
Almost every electronic access control system I've seen also has a door with a mechanical key override. I think some places even require this by code for emergency access in case of power outage, etc.
I don't see how you could have a building that was truly "keyless" in a practical way.
Last time I talked with the Allegion A&E rep he mentioned their new NDE electronic lock sets (Wifi enabled) would run at about MSRP $600 for cylindrical. The lock also fits in a standard cutout. With a solution like that I could see locations having more access control, but to hardware every door is just unnecessary and will always be way to costly.

It looks like this group's opinion is basically the inverse of the Assa/IFSEC survey:

I think the HID prediction is a lot closer to reality then this thread gives them credit for. Granted replacing all or even most mechanical locks is marketing hyperbole. However replacing the majority of mechanical locks to facility entrances and high use locked doors is, in my most humble opinion, very likely. I believe this will happen when the cost of an electronic lock drops to about double the price of an equivalent mechanical lock. This day is not far off. A standalone electronic lock should easily fit into the $200 to $400 price range, once production and competition is ramped up. These locks would not need conduit, wires, a wireless connection, or even periodic updates from someone walking around with an update tool.
I think the future to a large percentage of this market now served by mechanical locks, that don't need the control of an access control system; will be served by locks that don't need to be online. These locking systems will carry the access rights and time schedules on the credential rather than a central database, downloaded to a lock. There will be no need to update the lock's database, as the lock will request it from the card itself though an encrypted RFID transaction.
If you are in the access control business today, be aware that your future competition may be the big box store near you. I don't want to be all doom and gloom, there will always be a need for an access control systems, but it won't look like todays systems!

03/29/16 09:09pm
The comment is silly. Access control is the slowest moving segment in our business (even slower than alarm). New locks will appear (especially with network driven features) but the mainstream mechanical locks will change very little. Change and adoption of new technologies is snail-paced in access control.
My guess? in 10 years it will look remarkably like now (which looks remarkably like 10 years ago).

Hi Mark, are you wearing a hat? If so, hold on tight, cause I think we are in for bumpy ride that will be exciting and get us out of the rut, that we in access control, have been in since the early 90s! There is a lot to write about, but out of respect for our limited attention spans that are constantly interrupted by our customers, I will keep it short!
So what I see on the horizon, is movement away from the card reader having the smarts to know who is allowed in the door and at what times; to the card reader asking the credential if it has access rights to the door at this time. This change will eliminate the need for a data connection to the card reader or its field panel. When you couple that with the ability to make the locks self or battery powered, you eliminate the expense of running conduit and cable - a huge cost component. Eliminating wires will significantly drive down the cost of adding intelligence to a lock.
Are there down sides to the offline lock? For sure! The biggest is how do you tell the offline lock about lost, stolen, or cards of fired people? Offline locks have a "blacklist" database, which is a list of credentials that are not permitted access at any time. A blacklist does not need the constant updates that a whitelist of valid credential holders do.
You can update the blacklist by adding the newly blacklisted credential to all cards. When the updated credential is used in an offline lock, it will update the offline lock's blacklist database. A good design will have online locks at the perimeter these locks provide the normal access control functions, in addition they write to the credentials new blacklist data, and they will query the credential to get a log of its own transactions with offline locks.
So who is manufacturing these systems? I wrote an article about this in 2012, thinking that this would be new concept. However, my research found Salto, and I believe Kaba were already implementing the strategy. Last year we saw Assa Abloy and Allegion bring offline card readers to the market, and there are probably others.
I think the offline lock will make electronic locking proliferate. It won't replace mechanical locks, but it will significantly change the market share between the mechanical and electronic locks.
Maybe it will go up and then fall?
CLEVELAND, March 16, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Sales of mechanical security products in the US are expected to rise 5.4 percent annually through 2020 to $6.1 billion. Growth will be driven by the large lock segment, which will benefit from continued gains in building construction spending.
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