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IPVideoMarket.info's John Honovich says that the surveillance camera market has already tipped to IP.

Image courtesy Geoff Kohl

Editor's note: John Honovich publishes this and other information on network video at IPVideoMarket.info.

One of the most heated video surveillance debates is when the market will 'tip' to IP cameras, typically defined as the first year when IP camera revenue exceeds analog camera revenue. However, this debate and metric misses the more important shift that has occurred.

Already Tipped Right Under Our Noses

In the past year, the market has already tipped to IP cameras in the most relevant and important metric to integrators and end users - new project deployments in the most developed countries. This report will explain what is happening, why it is happening and why this tip is so important to today's video surveillance decisions.

The Surveillance System Sales Cycle

To appreciate why the 'real' tip has already occurred, we need to understand the sales cycle of surveillance systems. Most importantly, one needs to appreciate the role system compatibility has in shaping sales now and in the future.

Surveillance systems - combinations of recorders, cameras, monitors, etc. - are deployed and used over many years (typically 5 - 10) before wholesale replacements are done. The original architecture selected at the beginning of the cycle shapes what is purchased for nearly a decade.

Even up to a few years ago, 95%+ of new systems were based on a classic DVR architecture. Classic DVRs are only compatible with analog cameras - not USB cameras, not HDcctv cameras and not IP cameras. Once you selected a classic DVR, all you could use, without major structural changes, was analog cameras. As such, almost everyone only used analog cameras.

Often, critics of IP cameras would point to much higher sales of analog over IP and draw a conclusion that users were essentially 'voting' for analog cameras. In reality, users were 'voting' first and foremost for compatibility with their sizable existing investment into analog only DVRs.