Are your peers within the security industry really your biggest competitors? Or is the main competition you will face in the years to come going to be mainstream consumer electronics companies and big brand names such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung?
Nobody is expecting the likes of Apple to develop a globally standards-compliant intruder detection system overnight with all of the difficulties that would entail, yet our industry is currently facing a very real threat from non-compliant consumer systems, which deliver messages and content directly to end-users and empower them with control over their devices. We are increasingly seeing an expectation of this functionality from users as they demand the ability to interact when they want and how they want.
We have already seen some elements of this trend beginning to emerge. The Nest Protect smoke and CO detector shown in this video is capable of giving spoken warnings about the type of activation and location, can be installed as a standalone wireless device with a mobile app to alert you to the battery status, and affords you the ability to silence it simply by waving your hand at the device. It even provides a motion activated light at night.
This is a perfect example of consumer-driven capability with the design focused on solving problems for the end-users.
Recent months also saw discussions of patent applications from Apple for what is being billed as an “iHome” — introducing tracking that will enable services that may have traditionally been supplied by our industry (think Access Control / Lone Worker / Tracking). This is further supported by the enabling of the iBeacon feature in iOS7, which is finding much popularity among retailers.
The acquisition of Primesense (the company that developed the Kinect sensors) by Apple has led to a vast number of speculative videos about how the technology could be applied to its existing customer base. One potential usage has not yet been raised and could be enabled by the Primesense technology: mounting a 360 degree camera on the ceiling of a room with Kinect-style gesture sensing and recognition systems, integrated with voice control. What kind of false alarm rate could be achieved with such a capable detector? Would we need a control panel to be installed with this type of system when end-point detectors are so powerful?
Google has been busy acquiring innovative technology companies at a rapid rate, and some recent purchases included gesture recognition company Flutter and several facial recognition companies such as Viewdle. You see where I am going with this, right…?
Standards and regulation
Microsoft, Apple, and Google are working hard to develop powerful and effective natural language interfaces for their products, which could easily then find applications as fire and security hardware products. Such technology could even be said to provide additional layers of security as it enables voice recognition and location awareness.
Samsung is already a large-scale provider of security products to our industry. Facing pressure from Apple and Google, it may be in a perfect position to apply its knowledge of the industry to supply a broader range of security products, which incorporate its mobile device sensor technologies and capabilities.
Several forward-thinking manufacturers in our sector are working hard to provide the expected level of functionality from professional security products, yet we need to support them by helping to shape the standards and regulatory frameworks to enable such devices and to remove the potential barriers to trade, which can in some cases inhibit developments.
The examples above are all recent, from just the last few months. Expect to see more products that will increasingly converge upon our market space and ask yourself: “What are we doing to either embrace or compete against this trend?”
Free Download: The Video Surveillance Report 2023
Discover the latest developments in the rapidly-evolving video surveillance sector by downloading the 2023 Video Surveillance Report. Over 500 responses to our survey, which come from integrators to consultants and heads of security, inform our analysis of the latest trends including AI, the state of the video surveillance market, uptake of the cloud, and the wider economic and geopolitical events impacting the sector!
Download for FREE to discover top industry insight around the latest innovations in video surveillance systems.
