Dubai: Big manufacturers such as Panasonic and Honeywell are turning their backs on the personal home surveillance market as they are undercut by cheaper competitors from China, offering half the quality at half the cost, they say.
Speaking to Gulf News at security exhibition Intersec on Sunday, a senior Panasonic executive said that the company was struggling to keep up in the sales of home security cameras, losing out to inexpensive Chinese manufacturers.
“Normal security cameras, frankly speaking, are a very price-orientated market, so that’s why it’s very difficult to compete against the competitors, such as the Chinese manufacturers. They can provide solutions for half the price,” said Tetsuo Okawa, a senior manager in Panasonic’s system solutions department.
Okawa did note, however, that these Chinese producers were catering to those with less professional aspirations, willing to compromise quality for cost.
“They can provide these small systems because they don’t require high resolution, they don’t require long recording lengths with big hard disks,” Okawa said.
“It’s just a simple system, and in such systems, are competitors are very strong,” he added.
Panasonic tends not to focus heavily on the low-end segment of the camera market, instead paying attention to corporate clients and big businesses to compensate for the loss of the personal market.
Hotels, for example, have proven in recent years to be an abundant source of business for the most established players.
The sales of security equipment, including CCTV cameras and surveillance systems, are all hugely popular for hoteliers across the region, according to Dilip Sinha, general manager at Honeywell environmental and energy solutions, Middle East, Turkey and Africa.
Speaking to Gulf News in September 2017, Sinha said: “Swimming pools, hallways — everything is monitored. Every entry point is monitored by CCTV cameras, and this is all integrated and monitored centrally by security.”
“Security is very big,” added Sinha. “The security business is on the rise big time in all categories. Not just in luxury, but across all segments.”
According to a report from August by analysts Research and Markets, the UAE video surveillance market is projected to reach $193.7 million (Dh711.3 million) by 2023.
Despite a small dip in 2016, the industry is anticipated to bounce back with the recovery of oil prices post 2017. Growing security concerns in the region are expected to boost growth of the video surveillance market over the next six years. The rapidly growing hospitality sector is expected to partly fuel this increase in sales.
As a result of this boom in corporate clients looking to purchase expensive surveillance systems, Panasonic say that they are now sharply focused on Dubai Expo 2020, expected to draw 25 million visitors, accommodated by 71,000 new hotel rooms and the arrival of hundreds of new companies between now and then.
But that too is proving difficult, according to Okawa.
Answering a question about what kinds of business Panasonic had done in the field of security and surveillance with the UAE government, Okawa said: “So far we didn’t see good success with [the] UAE government field. We’ll try to continue to work on event projects, we hope.”
Okawa added that his company would try to adapt to the needs of Expo 2020 in order to win work on the project.
“So far, of course so many competitors are available, so it’s very difficult,” he added.
Despite this, Panasonic hasn’t completely forgotten about those who are looking for top quality home security: Earlier this month at CES in Las Vegas, the Japanese company unveiled its new HomeHawk remote home monitoring system, which offers full-colour night vision viewing.
