Intelligent Development of Video Optical Terminals Becomes a Trend
Seizing the Technological Opportunity: Leveraging the Intelligent Trend
With the rapid growth of China's economy, especially the launch of major projects such as "Safe City," "3111 Pilot Project," "2008 Beijing Olympics," and "World Expo" in recent years, China's security market has developed rapidly. Since 2002, the total output value of China's security industry has achieved a compound annual growth rate of 23.45%.
As a vital component of the security industry, video surveillance has made significant progress. Since 2002, China's security video surveillance market has grown at an average annual rate of 27.96%. Currently, the video surveillance market accounts for approximately 40-50% of the security market, making it the core of the security industry.
In this context, video surveillance systems are becoming increasingly large in scale. A single project can easily involve thousands or even tens of thousands of channels, and projects with hundreds of thousands of channels have been reported. At this point, relying on human monitoring of video feeds is no longer feasible. What is the next step? How can the full potential of tens of thousands of video channels be maximized? The answer is only one: intelligence.
What is "intelligence"? In simple terms, intelligence means fully extracting and mining key information from video resources and utilizing this information to provide valuable services to users. Intelligent surveillance systems can not only improve alarm accuracy and reduce missed or false analyses, but also shorten response times, improve response speed, generate more effective on-site data, and alert security personnel to relevant surveillance feeds before security threats occur, thereby preparing for potential threats. Therefore, intelligence is an inevitable trend in the development of video surveillance, whether in the transportation sector, Safe City construction, or financial monitoring. Consequently, there is no doubt that intelligence holds enormous market prospects and deserves close attention from all security manufacturers, including video optical terminal manufacturers.
Of course, optical terminal manufacturers cannot enter the intelligent market overnight. Since optical terminal manufacturers generally focus on video transmission, integrating intelligence requires not only sufficient innovative courage but also sufficient innovative capability. Only through reasonable innovation can they carve out their own path in the intelligent field.
Intelligent Transportation Surveillance
The Chinese government has designated Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) as an important direction for the future development of China's transportation. According to the draft of the "12th Five-Year Plan for Transportation," within the next five years, China will achieve perception and monitoring of national expressways, national and provincial trunk highways, critical sections, large bridges, vehicle areas, and transportation conditions; achieve full-process monitoring of dangerous goods transport vehicles, ships, long-distance passenger transport, urban traffic, taxis, and rail transit; and basically establish an all-round, all-weather, rapid-response maritime traffic surveillance system and maritime information service system. Intelligent transportation will become a hotspot for investment and construction in the transportation industry over the next few years.
Currently, the investment in the three major electromechanical systems for every 100 kilometers of expressway in China ranges from 100 million to 150 million RMB, of which comprehensive video surveillance investment is approximately 8 million to 10 million RMB. To fully build an intelligent comprehensive surveillance system, the investment per 100 kilometers would need to at least double, reaching approximately 18 million RMB. Based on an annual addition of 6,000 kilometers, this represents a market of nearly 1 billion RMB per year. This does not even include the renovation market for existing expressways.
Intelligent Safe City Construction
Intelligent Safe City construction also holds significant market potential. In developed regions abroad, the number of video surveillance cameras has almost reached one camera per 10 people. Many Safe City plans in China have also exceeded one camera per 100 people. If 10% of cameras are retrofitted, with an investment of 15,000 RMB per channel, the annual market demand could reach approximately 1 billion RMB. Table 3 shows the preliminary estimation results.
Intelligent Financial Surveillance
Similarly, the future demand for intelligent video surveillance in the financial industry is enormous. Currently, China has over 350,000 financial business outlets and 200,000 ATM machines nationwide. It is predicted that by 2014, the number of ATMs in China will exceed 400,000. Assuming an average of 30 video channels per business outlet and 5 video channels per ATM, and assuming that 10% of business outlets and ATMs will complete intelligent retrofitting within the next five years, taking the four major state-owned banks as an example, their total intelligent video demand over the next five years is roughly shown in Table 4.
The combined annual demand for intelligent VAR3 optical platforms from the four major state-owned banks alone reaches 49,400 channels. At 15,000 RMB per channel, the annual market capacity will reach 741 million RMB.
In summary, the annual market demand for intelligent products in transportation, Safe City, and financial systems alone totals approximately 3 billion RMB. The development of intelligence presents a huge potential market for video optical terminal manufacturers. Those who prepare early and develop comprehensive solutions ahead of time will stand out and achieve leapfrog development in the next round of market competition.
Future Role Positioning: Transformation into Overall Solution Providers
Since the beginning of 2005, video optical terminal products have gradually entered a red ocean competitive stage. A group of video optical terminal manufacturers took the lead in investing R&D efforts in next-generation technology development, with the development of optical transmission switching platform technology being a typical example. Manufacturers such as Bocan, Zhongwei, and Wasai have all developed optical platform products that differ from traditional video optical terminals. Optical platform technology involves numerous cutting-edge technologies, such as H.264 codec technology, high-speed IP network technology, and high-speed real-time switching technology. These technologies have far exceeded the technical scope of traditional video optical terminals, and the shortcut of "imitation" is no longer effective, making it difficult for some manufacturers to make progress and quickly launch mature products. However, as long as manufacturers remain focused, invest seriously in R&D, and accumulate solidly for 3 to 5 years, catching up is still possible.
After 4 to 5 years of R&D and improvement, these products have now entered the stage of large-scale promotion and application. Optical platform technology integrates multiple technologies, including high-speed optical fiber transmission networks, high-speed large-capacity real-time switching, IP network transmission, H.264 codec, and digital uncompressed video. In essence, it is an overall solution for large-scale, high-quality video networking surveillance networks based on high-speed digital optical fiber transmission. Currently, Bocan's BVx1000 digital video network switching platform, Zhongwei's SD/HD integrated VAR3 optical transmission switching platform, and Wasai's VOX-XG have all achieved good market applications. Especially in the field of expressway video networking surveillance, overall solutions based on optical platform technology have become one of the most important design schemes.
Of course, there is also a fully compressed platform solution, which is also a commonly used design scheme for expressways and deserves attention. In the fully compressed solution, camera images are compressed at the front end, then transmitted through the optical fiber network, with code streams switched via Ethernet switches. The main difference between this solution and the optical platform is that the optical platform solution can retain digital uncompressed images according to user requirements in addition to compressed images. In fact, the optical platform solution encompasses the fully compressed solution.
All technologies and products have a life cycle, and video optical terminals and optical platforms are no exception. Only by keeping pace with technological trends, investing early in future technologies, accumulating long-term and arduous technical expertise, and continuously innovating can manufacturers build their core competitiveness, continuously enhance their brands, and remain invincible in the fierce market competition.