The access control industry has historically seen steady growth, but in the past few years alone, there has been a renewal of innovation and growth, according to IHS.
The access control industry has historically seen steady development, but in the past few years alone, there has been a renewal of innovation and growth, according to IHS.
Speaking at a recent webinar held along with HID Global, Blake Kozak, Principal Analyst for Access Control & Fire at IHS Markit, said that mobile credentials will be the fastest growing segment in the access control market through 2020 with a CAGR of nearly 130 percent.
“But what does that mean for access control?” Kozak said. “Well, it means that access control has historically been a pretty steady growing market with only a few peaks and troughs, really because buildings always have to have security, regardless of the economic condition. However in the past five years, here at IHS, we have been seeing a resurgence in innovation and growth.”
Initially, this growth was driven by electronic locks replacing door furniture, with means to electronically control doors. But now that the market is mature, the research firm is starting to see installers and users of access control coming to expect ease of installation and use in addition to wireless capabilities.
“It’s been something that’s really unheard of in access control, and really unexpected in the past 15 years where we are starting to see a huge transition towards these technologies,” Kozak continued. “So, as a result, we really expect that access control was ready to move into a more digital age and embrace some of these alternatives to physical credentials and traditional means of controlling doors and identities.”
He added that looking at the market for credentials for access controls, there is again a transition towards digitalization. It started with proximity, magstripe and smart cards. In 2015 and 2016, the mobile credentials market remains fairly small. However, IHS expects that by 2020 the mobile credentials use and downloads will exceed about 15 percent of credential shipments in 2015.
“What this means is that this is a natural evolution of market, moving from unsecured magnetic stripes to proximity cards and now smart cards and finally, one of the next steps here is going to be the mobile credentials,” Kozak continued. “Looking at mobile credentials related to readers, we expect that the market for mobile credentials will increase from 400 thousand in 2015 to 50 million in 2020. Mobile capable readers will increase from 151 thousand to 300 thousand.”
In terms of the major markets, government will continue to remain a small market in 2015 and 2020, despite its significant growth potential. Commercial will be the largest market while the education vertical will come in just behind.