China’s video surveillance equipment market maintains momentum

City surveillance and transportation are the largest end-user industries in China.

By Source: IMS Research (acquired by IHS) November 28, 2012

In its fifth edition report on the Chinese video surveillance market, IMS Research (recently acquired by IHS Inc.) estimated that the market was worth  $2.6 billion in 2011, an increase of more than 30 percent over 2010. A key driver of this growth was the network security camera market.

City surveillance and transportation are the largest end-user industries in China. However, as economic growth slowed in 2011, investment in city surveillance also declined. In the second half of 2011, a number of high-speed railway construction projects were stopped or delayed due to financing difficulties caused by the global financial crisis. As a result, growth in the analog video surveillance equipment market started to slacken.

Cheryl Li, report author and research analyst at IMS Research commented, “Due to the increasing demand for high resolution images, network security products, especially network cameras, gained market share in 2011. In fact, network camera revenue increased 130 percent in 2011. In addition, the growth  also benefited from the increasing number of participants in the market. It should be noted that competition also reduced pricing, which is an important element in the market.”

Li continued, “High definition is a definite trend for the video surveillance market in China over the next few years. Besides network security products, HD-SDI products also gained greater attention. However, HD-SDI products are still expensive, and lack of a complete HD solution in the market. As a result, we estimated that it only had limited shipments in 2011.”

China’s GDP growth is targeted at 7.5 percent for 2012, marking the first time the figure has dropped below 8 percent in the past eight years. However, the government is continuing its investment in the western area, which may create new opportunities in end-user industries, such as city surveillance, airports and railways. In this latest China video surveillance market research, IMS Research forecasts  that the market will grow at a relatively high compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20 percent over the next five years.