US Security System Sales Down Sharply in 2009

SDM's 2010 Industry Forecast Survey estimates that 'total annual revenue declined 7.8 percent in 2009 to $44.67 billion. Revenue in 2010 has been forecasted to fall an additional 1.6 percent to $43.9 billion." SDM covers the US market across all verticals of physical security systems including alarm monitoring and residential markets.

Respondents ranked the economic conditions as the most important factor affecting sales for the next 3 years and terrorism as the least important. This is a striking turn-around to a few years ago where clearly terrorism was a key driver in driving security sales.

The breakdown of product category share proved interesting. While video surveillance's share of total sales grew from 17% to 23% from 2005 to 2007, that share has remained flat the last 2 years. Access control reported the highest gains (from 10% to 15% during 2006 - 2009) at the expense of burglar alarms (which dropped from 40% to 29%).