Growth In DIY Home Security Is Big Business

What was once professionally installed and found mostly in upscale housing has gone mainstream with a series of low-cost, app-based home surveillance products.

By Paul FlahiveNovember 21, 2016 9:30 am, ,

From Texas Public Radio

This is the sound of the alarm on a Piper NV unit which I triggered via my phone on a recent Sunday afternoon. I was sitting outside a coffee shop reading the paper when a buzz from my phone let me know the unit had detected motion. When I clicked on the notification the live stream showed me a disheveled man in his 60s going through boxes and night tables in my apartment. I watched him shuffle back and forth a bit before I set off the alarm and called the police.

Systems like this one didn’t exist 10 years ago, and the idea of an app-based security camera in an apartment even five years ago would have been cost prohibitive. Now for $200-$300, a plethora of companies are offering cameras that notify your smartphone. And consumers want them.

“Right now I just think it is expanding the market,” says Blake Kozak, the principle analyst for IHS; he runs the Smart Home and Security Technology Division.

“The global market for consumer video and DIY was estimated at about 9.5 million shipments in 2015 and we expect it to increase to 13 million in 2016, so roughly about a 37 percent increase in shipments for these devices,” Kozak contiued.

At nearly three quarters of a billion dollar industry isn’t a gimmick or flash in the pan, says Kozak–something that one early company in the field had to overcome to get investors.

In 2013, when Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff went on NBC’s SharkTank -the reality show where budding entrepreneurs pitch seasoned investors -he walked away empty handed. The sharks just didn’t get what he was selling.

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