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With a year of full operations, IP video surveillance camera maker Basler hopes low fail rates, competitive pricing and made-in-Germany stamp will drive adoption.

Image courtesy Basler

Marko Vogt, Basler's business development manager in North America for the companies IP video products, explains Basler's market positioning and strategy.

Image courtesy Basler

"I think the main selling point for our cameras is coming from the machine vision side, where we know how to build good cameras and get good image quality. The core knowledge at Basler is image quality and building quality cameras," says Vogt. "When people really look at image quality, especially at night, that is when we normally win the deal."

Despite the fact that machine vision cameras usually stream raw data, rather than providing compressed image streams (which is how all IP surveillance video is streamed), the company made a point of launching its products with H.264, MPEG4 and MJPEG standard. At the time, few companies were producing H.264 cameras, a stream format that is seeing increased adoption for its ability to reduce output bandwidth while not simultaneously decreasing image quality.

Along the way, Vogt says the company is finding applications for its cameras in non-standard surveillance situations. He notes that they have been adopted for license plate recognition in the traffic surveillance market and even for biometric facial recognition. On the traditional surveillance side, the high image quality has generated interest from casinos looking for IP cameras. They've also gained additional support from VMS companies to support their cameras, most recently adding Exacq to the lineup.

As for the future, Vogt thinks that the overall growth rate slow-down in IP video for 2009, while still positive in overall growth, will bounce back in 2010, and he's counting on the U.S. and overall North American market to appreciate low fail rates and the made-in-Germany stamp.

"We take pride in our cameras," Vogt says. "You can get a lower priced camera but you'll have a higher fail rate, and your cost will then be higher once you replace that camera. I think Americans generally appreciate the products, the quality we have and that we are made in Germany."