More Market Share, Please

• By Ralph C. Jensen
• Jul 14, 2009

When all is said and done, increasing market shares is one of the most important objectives in business. To achieve this goal, there are a number of important contributing factors, including providing excellent customer service, producing a better product and receiving customer attention.

The ambition of increasing marketability holds true in finance, in publishing and even for a group of companies representing a new method of standards.

For instance, Security Products magazine debuted 12 years ago and at the time, garnered zero percent of market shares. Existing publications were favored by all the readers and advertisers. We were barely noticed, but remained undeterred in trying to receive bit of recognition within the industry.

Today, we’ve emerged as an industry leader, enjoying 20 percent of market share, and thanks to you -- a loyal following of readers, contributing authors and companies offering us a mix of the newest products each month to publish -- we’ve accomplished goals some critics said would never happen. We appreciate all you’ve done for us.

Gaining market share is an exhaustive, but rewarding effort.

In a recent analysis by IMS Research, member companies of the video surveillance standards body that make up ONVIF command a significantly larger portion of the video surveillance equipment market than the member companies of the PSIA standards body.

ONVIF has command of more than 40 percent of worldwide video surveillance market revenues as compared with the 25 percent earned by PSIA member companies. The difference is even more startling when put into the context of network video surveillance equipment, said an IMS report. In this venue, ONVIF-member companies command nearly 60 percent of market revenues, compared with the 20 percent share for PSIA-member companies.

“The video surveillance industry has clearly decided that standards are desirable,” said Alastair Hayfield, senior research analyst at IMS Research. “Instinctively, it felt that ONVIF member had a greater market presence. However, it was a surprise to see quite how large the difference was. The move to a standards-based approach for network video surveillance is an important one. It will help to drive the adoption of network video surveillance products and will greatly benefit end users.”

At Security Products, we applaud both groups, who want to implement a standards-based framework. We feel it’s both necessary and beneficial to end users to have such an infrastructure in place. There’s a lot to be said for market share and for striving to acquire a larger slice of the pie.