CCTV 2011

2011 for the CCTV industry.

No doubt this last year (2010) has been hard for the CCTV security industry, no not hard, in fact, incredibly difficult. We have seen falling sales, smaller margins, and a service revenue drought.

It seemed that every installing company out there was cutting the price of its installations but prices for equipment were still rising not to mention fuel. A deadly combination and one that has seen many security companies go to the wall.

Survival of the fittest.

So how have CCTV security companies survived? Well many would say by the skin of their teeth. Redundancies and wage freezes have been enforced with most employees realizing that there is not much else out there anyway , so no matter how fed up they are they are best to stay put and hang on for better times.

Green shoots.

So are there signs of recovery ? After all the economy came out of recession in the spring. Well there are some small signs that the green shoots of recovery are starting to come through. Manufacturers lead times have risen sharply from what was next day, to in some cases over a week . When asked why, they cited a surge in demand for their products . Secondly enquires for IP CCTV are up . End users who have been hanging onto old out dated and frankly useless equipment are starting to replace this. In addition the IP CCTV revolution is starting to capture the imagination of the general public as they suddenly become aware of the possibilities this technology can bring.

Finally.

Finally, it’s nearly the New Year and there is optimism that we are going to see some reasonable growth, some great new developments within the industry and please, decent profit margins on our installations.