Difficult economic times have urged ALPR suppliers to switch their focus, placing greater emphasis on applications that generate an ROI. IMS Research forecasts the global market for ALPR to reach US$350.4 million by the end of 2012, growth of 6.9 percent from the previous year.
Thanks to a strong ROI, parking-time management has outperformed many of the other ALPR applications of late. Michael Arluck, report author and analyst at IHS, commented, “Parking-time management can help parking lot owners to drive revenue growth by identifying and charging vehicles that have stayed beyond their allotted time limit. At the same time, retailers and shopping mall owners will often welcome, and even request, the installation of parking-time management systems to help free up parking spaces for new shoppers, and thus further drive retail sales.”
In the U.K., budget cuts over the past two to three years have caused a number of suppliers, which previously focused on law enforcement, to diversify into parking. Even as the EMEA market as a whole declined in 2011, the parking segment increased by 4.1 percent.
“The parking segment in Europe has evolved into a different business model from simply selling equipment to the end user.” Arluck said. “Typically, management companies will approach large retailers and agree to provide ALPR systems with ongoing management of parking lots, in exchange for a percentage of the fees collected from tickets. This commission-based model has been well-received by retailers who might have been otherwise skeptical of the benefits of ALPR, or who are limited in funds to invest in noncore operations.”