Megapixel Market Growth Examined

JH
John Honovich
•Published Dec 09, 2009 00:00 AM
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Megapixel is the fastest growth market segment in video surveillance. The recent entrance of dozens of manufacturers has grown the market and reduced the dominance of early entrances.

In December 2009, Mobotix announced that it now has about 40% of the worldwide megapixel market (according to IMS study of 2008 revenue). While this is a significant percentage, it is down sharply from the previous year's study where Mobotix claimed an approximately 60% share of this market (in 2007 revenue). This is despite an approximate 25-30% growth in Mobotix's revenue between 2007 and 2008 (see annual revenue breakdown for Mobotix from 2006-2009).

Given that 2008 Mobotix's revenue is approximately $60 Million, this place the total 2008 megapixel market at about $150 Million. Since Mobotix's 2007 revenue was approximately $45 Million, this implies a doubling of the global market for megapixel cameras from about $75 Million in 2007.

With Mobotix going mainstream, it is almost inevitable that Mobotix's market share will shrink. This is simply because of the marketing power of the incumbent vendors (whether it is Axis, Bosch, Sony, etc.) who are rapidly expanding their megapixel camera lines. Moreover, Mobotix growth rate continues to decline with Q3 2009 revenue almost flat compared to a year ago. This will result in Mobotix's megapixel market share declining significantly again in 2009.

While megapixel revenue growth will clearly be substantial in 2009 (at least 50% but possibly over 100%), the growth will be more broadly distributed and harder to measure. In the past, simply adding up the revenue for a small number of companies (Mobotix, IQinVision, ArecontVision, Lumenera, etc.) provided a fairly good estimate of the overall market.

While it is almost certain that all the incumbent megapixel manufacturer's growth rate fell in 2009, this is likely be to offset by the growth of new entrants. Now, with literally 25 manufacturers (and growing) offering megapixel, determining the market size is going to be much harder. Nonetheless, our conversations with manufacturers indicate that megapixel is growing rapidly and for many manufacturers, hard to keep in stock (though still a small part of overall revenue for incumbent manufacturers).