What's ahead for the surveillance camera market?

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 02 August 2011 16:18

Business IT - Security

The next few years will see a continuing switch from analog to digital surveillance cameras, and to the increased use of processing power built into individual cameras, according to Ray Mauritsson, president and CEO of Axis Communications.

Speaking at the official opening of the company's new Melbourne office, Mr Mauritsson said Axis will continue to take advantage of the processing power of its custom-designed ASICs to deliver features rather than merely image resolution. For example, parts of some new algorithms for video analytics will be put into the cameras to improve scalability, while other parts will remain centralised (such as database matching).

Mr Mauritsson said Axis will continue to use open APIs so its partners can add their own software to the company's cameras.



But Axis continues to add to the 'smarts' it builds into individual cameras. The recently released Q1602 features the company's Lightfinder technology, which allows algorithms built into the ASIC to compensate for the characteristics of the camera's lens and image sensor. This gives improved image quality even in low light conditions and performs better than the human eye in near darkness.

Approximately two third of the surveillance camera market is still analog, said Mr Mauritsson, but "the shift [to digital/IP] is going on quite quickly." While year-on-year growth is around 10% overall, it is around 30% for digital cameras. He predicted that the market penetration of IP cameras will be between 90 and 95% by 2020. By that stage, growth will be driven by adoption of surveillance cameras by new markets (possibly homes) or by the availability of new functionality within cameras.

He also suggested that the deployment of the NBN will likely see the emergence of video surveillance as a service - the outsourcing of video monitoring and storage to cloud providers. This will be especially relevant to smaller sites with five to 10 cameras such as petrol stations and small shops, he said. "The broadband buildout will help us address that part of the market."

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