In this interview with asmag.com, Josh Woodhouse, Lead Analyst and Founder of Novaira Insights, shares his insights on video surveillance market trends, regional dynamics, and key technologies shaping the industry.
Video surveillance continues to play a critical role in safeguarding people, assets, and infrastructure across the globe. So how did the global video surveillance industry perform in 2025, and what lies ahead? In this interview with asmag.com, Josh Woodhouse, Lead Analyst and Founder of Novaira Insights, shares his insights on video surveillance market trends, regional dynamics, and key technologies shaping the industry. He also offers a glimpse into 2026, highlighting emerging innovations and what they mean for the future of video surveillance.
Josh Woodhouse, Lead
Analyst and Founder,
Novaira Insights
Q: Please give us an overview of the global video surveillance market in 2025. How was the overall market sentiment? Do you expect growth this year, and what were some of the growth drivers?
A: The global video surveillance market is forecast to grow 1.7 percent in 2025. However, this growth will be characterized by a decline of 5.2 percent in the Chinese market, while the rest of the world (excluding China) is forecast to grow by 6.1 percent.
Q: In which geographic regions was the growth in video surveillance more noticeable in 2025? Why?
A: High growth markets are forecast to include countries in the Middle East, South America, Southeast Asia and India. These are emerging markets where the installed base is less saturated than in North America, Western Europe and China. Demand in these latter countries is often for replacements to existing equipment. In contrast, demand in emerging markets is often for both new installations and for replacements to existing equipment. This allows for a higher rate of growth than when demand is largely for replacement business alone.
Another factor driving growth in 2025 is that growth in 2024 had been held back by elections and changes in government spending in a number of countries. 2025 has therefore seen pent up demand being fulfilled in them.
Q: How did the Chinese video surveillance market perform this year, after seeing a 7.8 percent decline in 2024 according to Novaira Insights? Do you see the Chinese market grow this year? On what drivers?
A: The Chinese market is forecast to continue declining in 2025. Novaira Insights does not expect the domestic market in China to return to as high growth as it has achieved at times in the past decade.
Q: Which video surveillance technologies were trending and gaining momentum in 2025? How did they address particular challenges or pain points faced by customers and users?
A: Demand for AI and cloud solutions has both continued to grow. AI has so far mainly been used to improve the accuracy of video analytics. We see system wide intelligent automation available in some platforms but adoption is still low. Cloud solutions are gaining momentum in the market, so far they are more popular in North America than in other regions.
Q: What were some of the main challenges facing the global video surveillance market in 2025? Are they expected to continue? How have video surveillance companies done to overcome these challenges?
A: Challenges include trade tariffs, the move to recurring revenues, compliance with regulations, cybersecurity and recruiting problems. These are forecast to continue to be challenges in 2026.
Q: How about 2026? Do you expect further growth in the global video surveillance market in 2026 compared to 2025? What will be some of the growth drivers? And what new innovations do you expect will come into video surveillance next year or in the near term?
A: The global market is forecast to grow 3.1percent in 2026. Again, growth will be characterized by decline in China (by 4.5 percent) and growth in the rest of the world (by 7.4 percent).
On the camera side innovations will include greater performance of multi-sensor cameras with more diverse sensor configurations. Instead of multiple visible-light imagers, future models are expected to combine visible light, radar, lidar and uncooled thermal sensors, offering more comprehensive situational awareness. We' continue to see additional IoT sensors sold by camera vendors add inputs to security ecosystems.
We'll continue to see improvements in truly wireless cameras powered by solar energy, batteries, video analytics and 5G connectivity may become viable replacements for traditional outdoor cameras, including those monitoring building exteriors and parking lots. We see lots of activity in North America particular for temporary trailer cameras, we'll see this approach into more diverse models with different and smaller form factors.
Generally for surveillance systems the ability to add more AI will continue with improvements to system wide intelligence with greater AI functionality built into VMS and security platforms. This will include more features marketed as agentic AI. We'll also continue to see the shrinking of AI models to offer greater more general inference on low powered edge devices.