Last year, 2015, was another rewarding year for VIVOTEK. In that year, the company’s annual revenue reached US$127 million and grew 12.4 percent. This year, VIVOTEK continued to show its success by maintaining double-digit growth each month, from January to May. These achievements have enabled VIVOTEK to stand out from
Last year, 2015, was another rewarding year for VIVOTEK. In that year, the company's annual revenue reached US$127 million and grew 12.4 percent. This year, VIVOTEK continued to show its success by maintaining double-digit growth each month, from January to May. These achievements have enabled VIVOTEK to stand out from the pack. Owen Chen, Chairman of VIVOTEK, mentioned that this growth proves the effectiveness of current company strategies against commodization and competition in the security industry.
Chen explained that the global security industry is currently undergoing many major changes which influence the dynamics of the security business. The “siliconization” of IP cameras and fast price reduction of semiconductors made the product life cycle become much shorter. Taking also into account the fierce competition from low-priced Chinese products, companies worldwide are experiencing this huge pressure in their local market.
Learning from IT To accelerate R&D innovations
Due to commodization, Chen emphasized that “Learning from the IT industry is essential in order to remain profitable.” VIVOTEK has optimized its R&D management through enhancing cross-platform integration. This has led to a remarkable increase in productivity and efficiency of its R&D team and largely reduced the unit prices of the company's products.
Some of the latest VIVOTEK innovations show positive results from this re-engineered R&D strategy. VIVOTEK's Smart Stream II technology, which complements its H.265/HEVC compression technology, successfully reduced both bandwidth and storage consumption to up to 80 percent while still retaining the highest standards of image quality in a camera.
Its stereo camera, armed with VIVOTEK's 3D Depth Technology and video surveillance functionality, provides two-megapixel real-time precise tracking video and high accuracy counting of up to 98 percent. The stereo camera generates data information such as people counting, flow path tracking that can be applied to in-store layout improvements, promotional evaluation, staff planning, and the control of service times, providing retail store owners with key metrics they can use to effectively make operating decisions and increase ROI.
Reliance on partnerships of the ecosystem
Another universal trend for security companies to stay competitive and add value is to provide solutions instead of devices. Chen said: “The boundary of security applications has been broken by the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. The demand for multiple mobile applications, connected homes and cars, and unmanned devices, like drones and robots, is also influencing the development of ‘traditional' security products and technologies. So thinking out of the box to provide solutions for verticals/applications and also for purposes beyond security is important.”
Providing solutions has been a long-term plan for VIVOTEK since five years ago. Chen stressed that leveraging i t s ecosystem par tners' domain know-how in certain verticals and applications enabled the company with the ability to quickly develop the right solutions for its customers.
The partners in VIVOTEK's ecosystem are mostly third-party software and hardware companies like VMS and systems integrators. “We care more about the completeness of our ecosystem and making sure everyone in this value chain stay profitable,” he said. Recently, VIVOTEK just announced strategic partnerships with several companies: with Genetec to deliver a new cloud-based video-surveillance-asa- service (VSaaS) solution, Stratocast for SMB customers, and two partnerships, with Videonetics and Neural Labs, for license plate recognition.
Chen further concluded: “In the connected world of the future, it will be impossible for a company to provide all the technologies or solutions on its own. Hence, it is important for us to rely on the partnerships in this ecosystem, which will be the optimal value for our company.”
In addition, VIVOTEK now has a complete end-to-end system for video surveillance, which comprises IP cameras and NVRs accompanied with CMS. With multiple field trials in different countries initiated by its project support team, VIVOTEK was able to make its video surveillance system more stable and close to what the end users really need.
Asia As the home market for testing systems
Being a global company is another value of VIVOTEK. After establishing its Middle East office in Dubai, the company will soon open an office in Mexico to service the whole of Latin America. Chen said Latin America is full of security demands. As soon as the country's financial status improves, the market will still be very huge and filled with potential.
Asia, in general, is another very important region for VIVOTEK to conduct field trials of its video surveillance systems in multiple applications. Chen said: “We have redefined our own home market. Instead of being confined to Taiwan, all the areas in Asia that we can travel to within 24 hours are our home market now. Over the years, the company's project support team has frequently travelled to Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan to solve their problems locally.”
VIVOTEK strategically grows different key verticals in different countries: it is more involved in factories and educational institutes in Taiwan, the retail sector in Japan, factories and city surveillance in Vietnam, city surveillance in Indonesia, public transportation in Malaysia, and private commercial projects in Australia and New Zealand.
Staying positive about the future
It is obvious that 2015 and 2016 would not be an easy time for most of the worldwide leading security companies. Even though the unstable global economy and huge pressure from price competition are testing the ability of these companies, the global demand for security technologies and systems will remain high, and the security market will still show healthy growth. Chen encouraged all the security companies to stay confident but to also be creative enough to find new applications, based on the integration of security systems with other connected ones.
Chen finally suggested, “We have to pay more attention to the development of IoT technologies and see how they are applied in smart retail, smart cities, smart factories and smart home.” He continued by saying that there is no single security company right now that has what it takes to be a market leader in this “connected” world, a fact that can also explain why the industry is experiencing a reshuffling. Therefore, companies should explore more opportunities in “cooperation” and “partnerships,” instead of focusing only on the competition in the market.