Leaders in the Video Surveillance business are in full agreement that IP Video has had the most impact in shaping the future of the business in the last fifteen years and  that it is has now crossed the chasm and with a market penetration of around 30/40% it is well into its growth stage.

The most notable innovators of this technology include Axis Communications and Mobotix.

At the Clean Energy Ministerial meeting in London last week ministers from 23 economies – representing 90% of global renewables and efficiency investment, heard from the International Energy Agency that under current policies, carbon dioxide emissions will nearly double by 2050.

In the first quarter of 2012 we recorded 15 acquisitions just 1 down on the same period in 2011. In our Report The Physical Security Business In 2011 we showed that 2011 was a record high for mergers and acquisitions for the industry; but we forecast that for this year the value of deals would fall by 2.5% but the volume would increase by 5%. Although many of the deals this quarter did not disclose the financial details their value has fallen significantly, more than we forecast for the average for the whole year and it’s unlikely that any one deal exceeded $100m.

All the acquisitions were strategic with the 2 most notable being HID Global’s acquisition of Easy Lobby and Authentec’s acquisition of Proxure, Inc., a provider of syncing and cloud based storage services. None of the traditional multi faceted manufacturer / suppliers made acquisitions this quarter and for many of them this has been that case for the last 2 years. Despite the fact that these companies are cash rich they have not been tempted to go for growth through acquisition but have secured major deals in other areas of their business portfolio.

One of the important findings of Memoori’s annual report The Smart Grid Business in 2011-2016 showed that some 40% of the worlds annual spend on Electrical Transmission and Distribution Equipment goes to Industrial and Commercial markets. Whilst the main body of the industry preoccupies itself with the electrical utility market the traditional manufacturers that span electrical and mechanical controls have also focused on the interface between Smart Buildings and Smart Grid in the industrial and commercial building business.

Well before the word Smart Grid entered our lexicon, companies such as Schneider and Siemens were quietly investigating how they could meet the Industrial and Commercial client’s need for a more secure efficient and better quality electrical supply. This market was being badly served by the Utility companies in a number of countries through delivering “dirty power” which was causing outage problems to their internal electrical network. The solution was to overlay intelligent controls across the network to monitor and control it.