The top 50 grew, on average, in double digit in 2018. The US and China are two main markets which ensure the growth for most of the companies in the list. However, most of the Taiwanese companies were still in the down-turn curve
.
The top 50 grew around 16 percent on average in 2018. Overall, 37 companies registered growth, with 20 recording double digits or more. This confirms that the security industry wasn’t too bad last year, as indicated by some of these high-growth companies.
This year, the No. 1 to 10 revenue gainers in the Security 50 ranking are, respectively:
Megvii Technology,
CP Plus,
Kedacom,
Costar Technologies,
Uniview Technologies,
Identiv,
IDIS,
Dahua,
ASSA ABLOY and
Magal. IDIS’ ranking jumped from No. 25 last year to this year’s No. 10.
ASSA ABLOY’s US division made 9 percent growth. In its financial report, the company said, “Demand was strong in North America and robust in Latin America for most markets. Growth was extremely strong in the US for electromechanical locks in both the commercial and institutional customer segments, as well as in the private residential market. Profitability continued to be strong despite increased material costs.”
“The US security system market recovered from a short-term slowdown in 2017 experienced by many companies, and returned to strong performance in 2018,” said Dror Sharon, CEO of Magal Security Systems. “EMEA and APAC regions also saw increasing demands in 2018 with heightened activity in the market resulting in more interest from potential end users.”
“All of the Costar Technologies business units saw increased sales opportunities across the Americas, and some units such as
Arecont Vision Costar also witnessed growth in projects in the Middle East and Asia Pacific,” said Jeff Whitney, VP of Marketing at Arecont Vision Costar/Costar Technologies. “Security products, solutions, and technology are very much in demand, and multiple markets are increasing in demand as a result. In our case, having a mix of made-in-USA and other world-class products across a wide range of verticals results in continued growth in many spaces.”
Vertical-wise, growth was seen in all the major verticals as well. “Over the course of last year, we saw higher demand for our Hirsch physical access product line in multiple levels of government — federal, state and local — as well as in the education space. For our 3VR video intelligence solutions and data analytics, we saw an upsurge in retail and banking. Interest in our web-based access control management solution, Liberty, mainly came from commercial small-to-medium businesses, retail, and small start-up businesses, while interest in Freedom, based on a software-defined architecture (SDA), came from IT, enterprise, K-12 school systems, and high-tech visionary/forward-leaning companies,” said Mark Allen, GM for Premises at Identiv.
Yet more importantly, more and more vendors are taking on projects for non-security applications in different verticals, helping end users achieve business intelligence or management efficiency.
“One of the largest verticals Axis is focusing on is the retail sector … the demand for surveillance solutions is not only driven by the traditional need for security, but also the need for applications that improve customer experience and the entire business. Enabled by analytics, specific examples of how cameras could be used include store (layout) optimization, reducing checkout lines and handling peak shopping periods,” said Ray Mauritsson, President and CEO of
Axis Communications. “We also see more and more interest in the development of safe (and smart) cities … there’s on the one side the safety aspect that increases when cameras are connected to law enforcement and help police and other operators to keep the cities safe, but also the efficiency and sustainability aspects. For example can cameras help to regulate and optimize the traffic flow by connecting live images with other data sources.”
As for next year, it is expected that the aforementioned technologies will remain popular, while usage of security equipment in non-security applications will continue to be seen. As for the market, growth is expected as a report by Memoori forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 10.7 percent for physical security from 2019 to 2024. It however remains to be seen whether the trade restrictive measures issued by the U.S. will really take a toll on the Chinese companies’ 2019 sales, which should be made known during the first half of next year.