There are considerable grounds for optimism when the pro AV industry converges once again on Amsterdam in February. Here is an overview of some of the technologies driving market growth.
Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) has long been the go-to event for discovering the latest market and technology trends in the professional audiovisual (AV) industry – and ISE 2020 will be no different. Visitors can expect to sense enormous confidence in the halls, not least because AVIXA’s 2019 AV Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis (IOTA) Global Summary saw the organisation raise its growth forecast, reflecting, it said, strong economies and demand for new products and services. From €224billion in 2019, AVIXA now believes 2024 will see worldwide revenues for the industry reach €296 billion – outpacing global GDP growth.
CEDIA’s research gives similar grounds for optimism. The UK alone, for example, represents a market valued at around €779 million, with home cinema installs rising 9% and 80% of participants in a CEDIA survey expressing confidence that their revenues would rise over the coming year.
It’s widely agreed that the success of both the commercial and residential sectors is a function of two key drivers: the proven value that AV solutions deliver, and the AV industry’s continuing embrace of new technologies. In the commercial world, AV is evolving from being ‘nice-to-have’ into a highly strategic asset.

Growing importance of AI
A recurring theme throughout the event is likely to be the growing importance of AI and machine learning. In smart homes, for example, ISE visitors can expect to see growing evidence of manufacturers embracing the likes of Alexa and Google Assistant – both enabled by AI – responding to consumer desire for a more integrated ‘one ring to rule them all’ unified environment. That’s becoming increasingly important as growing numbers of home devices and appliances become IoT-enabled. ISE 2020 will reflect this shift in the connected homes market.
On the commercial side, AI – especially in conjunction with sensors such as embedded cameras – is rapidly finding a place in digital signage (a market forecast by AVIXA to be worth $45 billion by 2024 – roughly 35% larger than 2019) as retailers especially look to try to create more personalised, more engaging, more relevant consumer experiences. In fact, researchers expect the pro AV industry to see greater adoption of AI in any market where customer experience is important, such as hospitality and healthcare. Hospitality companies will spend vast sums on AV in the coming years in order to meet and exceed the expectations of a travelling public deeply rooted in technology.
AI is also believed to have the potential to transform unified communications and collaboration – and is already finding its way into AV solutions designed for education, where research indicates that almost nine out of ten pupils and students are now leveraging the benefits of AV technology for learning. Whatever the vertical market, ISE visitors can expect to see plenty of evidence of AI – including XR (extended reality) – being embedded across a number of platforms.

LED proliferation
AI is very much a ‘behind the scenes’ technology. One of the most visible manifestations of change in the industry is the rapid rise in popularity of LED as the screen technology of choice. Not only does it bring unique advantages in the creative deployment of displays such as videowalls, but also, as its price declines, it is starting to displace single LCD screens. ISE 2020 is likely to provide further evidence of LED’s proliferation – and in the residential systems market too as ‘multi-screen’ becomes the new trend for home theatre installs.
A recurring question, however, is how long LED will enjoy its current place in the sun. OLED technology has numerous theoretical advantages in terms of image quality, installability and the opportunity for highly creative deployments. It’s still, however, not without its challenges – notably in the area of price – and ISE 2020 will provide an opportunity to assess the progress it’s making toward prime time.
A perhaps surprising fact is that, in the face of stiff competition from flat panel displays, the projector market remains remarkably vibrant as it reinvents itself. Having largely eliminated the reasons not to buy – predominantly cost of ownership – with solid state illumination, new generations of projector are becoming increasingly application-specific. The success of projection isn’t limited to the commercial market: PMA Research reports that worldwide sales of 1080p consumer projectors have risen by nearly 30% year-on-year.
It’s not all about images on screens, however. So called ‘object-based audio’ has taken the sound world by storm with its ability to deliver wholly immersive sound stages. Advances in the ‘placing’ of sound are being matched by increasingly sophisticated DSPs that can ‘tune’ an installation to create the optimum match with the acoustics of the room. Together, they’re creating some jaw-dropping aural experiences – and those will be demonstrated at ISE. Audio is no less affected by the progressive ‘IT-ification’ of the AV industry, and visitors can expect to see numerous new audio-over-IP products – not to mention a plethora of AV-over-IP platforms.
Those platforms – distributing video, audio, control signals and more over IP networks – are becoming increasingly commonplace, and ISE 2020 visitors can expect to find more as the worlds of AV and IT progressively converge, bringing new levels of flexibility, interoperability and scalability – not to mention security. Concerns about loss of image and sound quality have all but been eradicated.
What’s exciting about ISE, however – and ISE 2020 will be no different – is not just finding out about the latest developments in today’s AV technology. Where the excitement really comes in is when you get taken by surprise by something that you didn’t expect. To find out what those surprises are, there’s no substitute for being in Amsterdam in February.

ISE 2020 FAQs
What is Integrated Systems Europe?
ISE is the leading trade show for the professional AV systems integration industry. Held annually since 2004, it has grown to become the world’s biggest pro AV show.

Who owns ISE?
ISE is jointly owned by two professional associations: AVIXA, the Audiovisual and Integrated Experiences Association; and CEDIA, the Custom Electronics Design and Integration Association. Broadly speaking, these two bodies are concerned with the commercial and residential markets respectively. Each organises an extensive professional development programme at ISE, ranging from free 20-minute talks to all-day conferences.

Where is ISE held?
The RAI Amsterdam has been the regular home of ISE since 2007. Because of the show’s continued expansion, it will relocate in 2021 to the Fira de Barcelona.

How is the show floor organised?
ISE 2020 will occupy all 15 halls at the RAI. The show floor is divided between generic space and six Technology Zones: Audio and Live Events; Digital Signage and DooH (digital out of home); Education Technology; Residential; Smart Building; and Unified Communications.

When does ISE take place?
ISE 2020 is a four-day exhibition, running from Tuesday 11 to Friday 14 February. The professional development programme, which includes conferences and free presentations run by ISE and its partners as well as AVIXA and CEDIA, begins on Monday 10 February.

The security solutions market was valued by Marketsandmarkets at USD 257.9 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach USD 397.6 billion by 2024 at a CAGR of 9.0% during the forecast period.

The research company says that key factors contributing to the growth of the security solutions market include growing crime rates and terrorist activities globally, increasing consumer awareness and security concerns and willingness to pay for security systems, rapid development in wireless technologies for fire detection, and escalating demand for do-it-yourself and spy cameras.

The security solutions product market for fire protection systems is expected to hold the largest share in 2019 says the company’s recent report. Enterprises across the world have increased their spending on fire protection measures to protect their infrastructures as well as to reduce risks to human lives. New intelligent sensors have networking capabilities, in which a group of sensors and detectors can communicate easily through control units, leading to increased efficiency in fire protection systems.

The market for security services is expected to hold a larger size of the market during the forecast period. Products such as video surveillance systems, access control systems, and fire protection systems are implemented for various application areas such as commercial, residential, government, transportation, retail, and banking and finance industries. For the smooth and continuous working of all security products, various services such as maintenance and integration services are required. Security systems are useful only when they are properly engineered, designed, installed, serviced, and maintained.

The highest CAGR on a geographical basis for the market during the forecast period lies with the APAC region, as many governments have laid down the safety norms for various sectors; the execution of these policies would create a significant demand for security systems in the future. Furthermore, the technological and economic advancements in the APAC region are expected to drive the overall demand for security solutions market.

ADT, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Bosch, Hikvision, Dahua, Axis, Secom, UTC, Assa Abloy are just a few of those cited as being amongst the major players this latest report on the security solutions market.

The increasing number of consumers preferring a more effective and convenient way to secure their property has caused the rapid growth of the global smart home security market. According to PreciseSecurity.com research, the expanding trend will continue in the following years, with the worldwide shipment of home monitoring and security devices reaching more than 307 million units by 2023.

The global smart home devices market reached nearly 815 million units’ shipments this year. According to 2019 data, it is forecast to grow at a five-year CARG of 14.4% and reach 1.34 billion items in 2023.

The most significant part of that amount or 339.8 million units are coming from the video entertainment category alone. However, the surveys confirm that home monitoring and security devices are the sections expected to grow the most between 2019 and 2023.

In 2018, this segment of the market recorded 97.7 million sold units. During the next twelve months, the same part of the market reached 156.6 million purchased units. The recent surveys indicate that home monitoring and security equipment like smart locks, surveillance cameras, and video doorbells will account for 22.1% of the global smart home devices shipments in 2023 with a CAGR of 18.4%.

Smart Video Doorbells Expected to Reach $1.4 Billion in Spending by 2023

The statistics show that video doorbells are one of the most common purchasing decisions among smart home shoppers worldwide. This relatively young segment of the smart home market is forecast to reach $1.4 billion in spending globally by 2023.

Recent surveys show that video doorbells are most wanted smart home devices in U.S. broadband households as of 2019. Nearly 4 million video doorbells were sold in the United States during this year, with a forecast to reach 5.6 million units by 2023. Other ordinary items among U.S. smart home shoppers were smart speakers with voice assistants, smart light bulbs, and smart smoke detectors.

Genetec, a leading technology provider of unified security, public safety, operations, and business intelligence, has released new research that reveals as many as 68.4%­ — or almost 7 out of 10 — cameras are currently running out of date firmware.

Installing the latest firmware isn’t just about receiving new features, it also ensures that your devices are up to date with the latest cybersecurity measures.

“Our primary research data points to the fact that more than half of the cameras with out-of-date firmware (53.9%) contain known cybersecurity vulnerabilities. By extrapolating this to an average security network, nearly 4 out of every 10 cameras are vulnerable to a cyber-attack,” says Mathieu Chevalier, lead security architect at Genetec.

The research conducted by Genetec also showed that nearly 1 in 4 organizations (23%) fail to use unique passwords, relying instead on the same password across all cameras from the same manufacturer, leaving an easy point of entry for hackers once only one camera has been compromised.

Research was conducted on a sample of 44,763 cameras connected to systems that are part of the Genetec opt-in product improvement program.

Despite many new surveillance cameras now requiring installers and end users to enter a new password or admin credentials upon installation, there are customers out there older equipment that never updated their passwords, which could potentially compromise other critical data and systems that reside on their network, according to the company.

“Unfortunately, our research shows that the ‘set it and forget it’ mentality remains prevalent putting an entire organization’s security and people’s privacy at risk. All it takes is one camera with obsolete firmware or a default password to create a foothold for an attacker to compromise the whole network,” adds Chevalier. “It is critical that organizations should be as proactive in the update of their physical security systems as they are in updating their IT networks.”

Avigilon Corp., a Motorola Solutions company, announces the latest version of its video management software (VMS) now incorporates facial recognition technology.

The new “appearance alerts” capability of Avigilon Control Center (ACC) 7.4 will help commercial organizations, such as educational institutions and hospitals, accelerate response times by identifying people of interest in enterprise settings, according to the announcement.

For example, the technology can alert the security team at a local high school when a banned or flagged individual has entered the campus.

People of interest are identified based on a secure, controlled watch list created and maintained by authorized users at the commercial organization.

If a potential match is found, the user is alerted within the ACC software, and security personnel can then determine whether further investigation or action is necessary.

“Our latest ACC software delivers substantial benefits to our commercial customers by offering facial recognition technology in a secure and controlled manner,” states John Kedzierski, senior vice president, video security solutions, Motorola Solutions. “The appearance alerts capability enables our customers to move from a reactive approach — staring at a wall of video feeds where critical information can be easily missed — to a proactive approach that brings important information directly to authorized users so they can make better-informed decisions.”

ACC’s new facial recognition capabilities reflect Motorola Solutions’ commitment to the responsible use of artificial intelligence as well as individual privacy rights, the announcement states. The company states that data stewardship is integral to these new capabilities, including building compliance controls into its products to support this.

For example, user authentication is required for these capabilities, audit logs of user actions are generated, data retention periods for the watch list can be specified within the application, and records can be expunged or deleted on demand as well as verified through auditing and reporting.

Data is locally hosted, owned and controlled by the business or school. The data used to train machine learning algorithms is also thoroughly evaluated, ensuring sufficient quantity, quality and diversity to ensure high accuracy and consistent performance, according to the company.

Featuring 14x magnification and the world’s most powerful image stabilization system, the new FUJINON Techno Stabi TS-X 1440 is the flagship product of the Techno Stabi binocular series

The TS-X 1440 is the new top model in the FUJINON Techno Stabi binocular series and offers outstanding optical performance with 14x magnification and the most powerful image stabilization (±6°) for this segment worldwide. The bright, clear and stabilized image provided by these binoculars makes them perfectly suited for outdoor wildlife and astronomical observation.

The binoculars are very versatile. Not only are they used for wildlife and stargazing observations, but they are also utilized by spectators at sports events and audiences at live concerts. FUJIFILM exploits its outstanding optical technologies and design concepts to meet the increasing demands in these fields of application. This results in top products of the highest quality, such as the new FUJINON Techno Stabi TS-X 1440.

The TS-X 1440 is a high-performance binocular with 14x magnification and an extremely powerful image stabilization. The superb image stabilization is achieved thanks to the application of proven and tested FUJIFILM camera lens technologies. The oscillations registered by a gyro sensor are compensated for by a precisely controlled prism in the optical beam path so that a high image stabilization of ±6° is reached.

In addition, the large lens elements, with an effective diameter of 40 mm, contribute to the extraordinary speed of the binoculars, while FUJIFILM’s unique EBC multiple coating reduces annoying lens reflections and ghosting. This coating also reduces chromatic aberration while increasing the transmission rate, resulting in an exceptionally clear and bright image.

Finally, the modern and ergonomic design of the FUJINON TS-X 1440 has been combined with a water-repellent construction to ensure that even when used on a boat or a vehicle, the binoculars are always safe to handle and work quickly, precisely and reliably every time.

Chinese technology giant Huawei filed a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission last week, seeking to hit back at U.S. government regulators who have made it difficult for the company to conduct business with American companies.

In November, the FCC voted to forbid American telecommunications companies from using federal subsidies to buy equipment from Huawei and ZTE due to the corporations posing security risks, The New York Times reported.

The lawsuit comes after Huawei was already placed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List, which makes it nearly impossible for U.S. companies to sell products to Huawei and vice versa. While the department has begun to grant licenses to some companies to sell tech to Huawei, many more companies will not be able to do so as long as Huawei and its subsidiaries are on the list.

Huawei already filed a lawsuit against the Commerce Department in June following the decision to effectively “ban” Huawei, which was formerly a large business partner of several companies in the security and video surveillance industries.

While Verizon and AT&T have not used the companies’ chips and other equipment for years, rural telecommunications providers have relied on it and are struggling to transition their systems to other technology.

“The F.C.C. claims that Huawei is a security threat, but F.C.C. Chairman Ajit Pai has not provided any evidence,” Huawei’s chief legal officer, Song Liuping, said during a news conference last week, according to the Times.

“Carriers across rural America — in small towns in Montana, Kentucky, and farmers in Wyoming — they choose to work with Huawei because they respect the quality and integrity of our equipment,” Song added.

Despite the obstacles to selling to and buying from companies in the U.S., Huawei’s business has remained fairly steady, according to the Times.

By 2021, more than one billion surveillance cameras will be installed across the globe, according to a new report issued by IHS Markit.

An estimated 770 million cameras are already in place, with about 54 percent of them installed in China, according to CNBC, which reported on a pared-down version of the study.

The Americas are home to the next largest amount of cameras, with 18 percent found in those continents. Asia, excluding China, has about 15 percent of the remaining cameras in the world.

According to the research, the places with the greatest opportunities for growth in the video surveillance market include developing countries like India, Indonesia and Brazil.

The report found that those three countries are expected to join China and the U.S. in the top five markets for surveillance cameras. Japan and the United Kingdom currently hold those spots, with the U.K. currently having more surveillance cameras per capita than any other European country.

Researchers found that the U.S. is only slightly behind China in terms of cameras per person. One camera was installed for every 4.1 people in China in 2018, while the number in the U.S. is a camera per 4.6 people.

Another recent survey found that the U.S. has more surveillance cameras per capita than China, with 15.28 surveillance cameras per 100 citizens. China has a density of 14.36, according to the computer security site Precisesecurity.com.

China’s video surveillance industry provides AI technology to 63 countries, CNBC reported, and is home to some of the largest companies in the market, including Huawei, Dahua and Hikvision.

Micron Technology unveiled the world’s highest-capacity industrial microSD card – Micron i300 1TB3 microSDXC UHS-I – to address the edge storage needs of the video surveillance market and other industrial applications. The new Micron i300 1TB microSD card is based on Micron’s advanced 96-layer 3D quad-level cell (QLC) NAND technology, now making it cheaper for small- to-medium-sized deployments to have primary storage in the camera compared to a centralized storage architecture. The i300 microSD card enables users of video surveillance systems to capture and store more than three months of high-quality video footage on-device and at the edge.

“Micron’s i300 industrial-grade microSD cards for edge storage open the possibility for a broad range of video surveillance as a service deployments that no longer require local network video recorders,” said Amit Gattani, senior director of Segment Marketing in Micron’s Embedded Business Unit. “Micron’s 96-layer 3D QLC NAND is instrumental in helping us deliver 1TB of storage in a microSD form factor and at a breakthrough price point to accelerate edge storage and cloud-based service models.”

Intelligence at the Edge

VSaaS systems are increasingly integrating artificial intelligence-based and higher-resolution cameras that require more storage at the edge. The Micron i300 1TB microSDXC card allows 24/7 continuous capture and storage of up to 1TB of high-quality video in the camera. Users of video surveillance systems can now store large amounts of video footage on-device, opening a broader set of uses for cloud-managed solutions.

“Demand for commercial surveillance cameras continues to grow at a rapid pace,” said Jeff Janukowicz, research vice president at International Data Corporation (IDC). “Smart cameras, artificial intelligence, machine learning and threat detection are being driven to the edge for real-time responsiveness, making Micron’s 1TB microSD card an invaluable solution for differentiation and innovation.”

Micron’s industrial-grade microSD portfolio is designed to endure the harsh environments in which surveillance systems are deployed. The Micron i300 1TB microSDXC card minimizes frame drops in a 24/7, 30 frames per second (FPS) recording environment, offering twice the reliability of hard disk drives at 2 million hours mean time to failure. The card features a smart tool for monitoring the health of devices.

“VIVOTEK has launched a series of edge-computing network cameras and successfully deployed Micron’s high-quality industrial-grade microSD cards,” said Shengfu Cheng, director of Marketing and Product Development Division, VIVOTEK Inc. “Micron’s portfolio of industrial microSD cards up to 1TB equips us to deliver greater flexibility, scalability and maintenance efficiency to our customers, all of which contribute to a better return on investment.”

The Micron i300 microSDXC UHS-I card is offered in 128GB to 1TB capacities, which are available for ordering. The entire industrial-grade portfolio includes capacities ranging from 32GB to 1TB.