CPSE 2017 Highlights

I find it hard to believe that Hikvision would be able to put police force / court against IPVM employees and even if they can, it would be a much larger PR crisis and huge backfire on themselves.

Hardly a successful company would harm one's own business just to 'retaliate'. Let alone the uselessness of this 'retaliation' and even if they want, they can't.

Sorry to those that told me not to post you were right.

Facts are facts but only If not wearing USA glasses

Here are a few few photos of the show floor. I would say, for me, that the single most impressive (and surprising) thing was the SCALE and incredible attendance of the show.

Another poster mentioned that he thought the Dahua booth was bigger than the HIKVision booth - I have no idea how he could tell once on the show floor. They were both massive booths. And it was practically impossible, at least in the first 2 days, to spend any kind of quality time inside those booths without being shoved and pushed around by the sheer number of visitors.

If we compare to ISC West in Vegas, the major difference is in the number of visitors: 130,000 for CPSE and 30,000 for ISC West.

If you cram all those people into approximately the same number of booths (1100 for CPSE and 1000 for ISC), then you can understand what you see in these photos:

This is inside the Dahua booth. It was as busy outside the booth:

This is outside the HIKVison booth. It was as busy inside the booth:

This is the corridor you faced as you entered the show floor. HIK, Dahua and Uniview were all in this corridor. It was uncomfortable walking in this crowd, there were simply too many people:

These are a few photos from the top of the escalators leading to the 2nd floor:

At different booths I went to that I had dealt with before I asked other than Chinese what Nationalities was the most real interest from they basically all came up with the same top 3 being Indian, Russian and American in varying orders. Yet I didn't notice them as standing out in the crowd.

All the real demonstrations and deals are done after the show on Wed afternoon, Thursday and Friday when they invite you to their factories. All the Chinese companies use JIT ie "Just In Time". They rarely carry stock. It is made to order.

Rarely do they have samples at the show to purchase. They will make it and hand it over when you visit their factory or deliver to you at your hotel a few days later.

The exhibition was really HUGE, both in terms of size/exhibitor companies and also attendees. Surely one of the reasons is because so many companies working in the CCTV field are based in the Shenzhen and Guangzhou area. As a result this show is becoming a leading trading event for the security systems business.

There were 9 halls in total where exhibitor companies were grouped by the type of systems and/or vertical market applications they offered. Roughly speaking some 60% of the exhibition was focused on CCTV, 25% - access control, 10% - home automation/alarm/consumer electronics, 5% - police equipment, drones and others.

Hall 1 was the main international/oversea area for CCTV where all major players had booths with Dahua having probably the biggest area, followed by Hikvision, Uniview, TVT and others:

As others pointed out - AI was definitely the main theme with most of the companies showing deep learning products, face recognition, LPR, classification, etc. Both Hikvision and Dahua exhibited a complete lineup of such products:

TVT was showing a face recognition IP camera + NVR combo:

Others were demonstrating software solutions:

Hikvision and Dahua were also emphasizing on the non-video products - video intercoms, access control, UAV and others:

Portable Speed Measuring Radar

Doorlocks with embbeded biometric reader:

Deep learning Dual lens traffic camera:

Second tier Chinese companies tried to make their presence noted as well:

JuFeng/XM:

Hall 9, 6 and 7 were home to smaller manufacturers producing all kinds of CCTV accessories, gadgets, strange type of industrial cameras (laser pan-tilts, Ex-proof), network PoE switches, converters, power supplies, brackets etc.

Hall 9 overview:

Various strange interesting products could be found:

And also some quite useful gadgets and accessories:

4-in-1 TVI/CVI/AHD/CVBS converters video-over-fiber:

4-in-1 TVI/CVI/AHD/CVBS modulator being able to transmit 2 video signals over 1 coax cable:

Various network appliances suited for CCTV use like industrial PoE switches with ring capability; Ethernet over coax; Ethernet + PoE over fiber products:

Hall 7 overview:

Hall 3, 4 and 5 were dedicated to access control systems and there were all kinds of products including IP access control systems, biometrics, parking systems, barriers, bollards and others:

At many booths visitors could buy samples or get bargain on "hot" products, big commercials were present in many places - like this poster at the entrance advertising a PoE switch for merely 109 RMB (roughly 17 USD):

There were many other specialized product offerings like UAV/drone systems, video wall appliances, structured cabling systems. The main halls were packed with people almost all of the time making it difficult to talk in details with the exhibitors. Nevertheless, the sales people were making their best to meet and give proper information to the booth visitors, especially upon seeing an international oversea visitor going to their booth. A full and effective visit of this event requires 3 days in my opinion. I missed the first day and I also had some pre-arranged meetings with existing suppliers and other people from the CCTV industry in China which I personally know, which made time for me even less. The visit though is definitely worth it, the scale and variety of products are amazing and this is really a primary source for insight of the things to come in the following years.

After the show I flew to Beijing for a meeting and factory visit of another partner - there I could understand why the CCTV market in China is getting so huge - where else can you find a single metro entrance point or a street pole with PTZ cameras overlooking each other :)

Update: One other important reason we did not go to China, and something we can now disclose, was that the WSJ was working on and now has released an investigation into Hikvision.

We did not know when it was going to be released or what exactly would make it into print but we knew they were asking about government ownership and cybersecurity issues, so we were concerned that if it was to be released while we were in China that this could increase security concerns and place us in a bad situation. Now that it has been released and it did go into the government ownership and cybersecurity as well as citing us, the risk remains for us. I would not say we would never go but we would certainly be very cautious about going.

Now, China-based IPVM members, please let us know if we are overreacting.