Is Access Control Nearly 400% Larger than Video?

JH
John Honovich
•Published Aug 09, 2010 00:00 AM
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A July 2010 Report on Electronic Security Systems makes a number of contrarian and shocking claims about the state of the market. For background information, readers may review the Freedonia Group's Marketing Brochure and an SSN interview with the report's author.

Key claims made in the report include:

  • Overall US electronic security market will grow from $10.9 billion in 2009 to $17 billion in 2014. The report does not identify if this is manufacturer revenue or total end user revenue. We suspect this is manufacturer revenue.
  • Access control represents 37% of the market today and will grow to 43% of the market in 2014. Access control CAGR will be 12.8% from 2009-2014.
  • CCTV represents only 10% of today's $10.9 Billion market (that is about $1.1 Billion). Video/CCTV will grow only at 7% to $1.6 Billion in 2014.
  • Quoted in SSN, the report author said "the 2009 economy was so bad, the market for video stayed essentially flat between 2004 and 2009."

These claims appear erroneous. First, US video revenue cannot be only $1.1 Billion. Axis alone generated over $100 Million 2009 US revenue. Pelco easily generates yearly a few hundred million US revenue. Moreover, the consensus among other analysts is that US video surveillance revenue is $3 Billion+.

Secondly, it appears impossible that access control revenue would be that much higher than video. For instance, an April 2010 SSI integrator survey [link no longer available] records video as being 50% more popular revenue generator than access and having 50% more installs per month. We are not sure what the exact ratio of video to access sales. We could believe that total revenue was close. We find it impossible that access is 3 to 4x the size of video.

Finally, the report's claim that access control's growth rate would be almost twice that of video's is contrarian to say the least. As we examined in an August 2010 integrator survey, video absolutely dominates the list of future revenue generating opportunities.