Canon to roll-out surveillance cameras, phase out entry-level projectors

In keeping with the market dynamics and to cash in on the popularity of surveillance devices, Canon India is all set to roll out its novice product range of surveillance cameras, post-April. The company estimates this segment as a promising business, especially with government and private agencies putting in extra efforts to avert any untoward incidents at public places.



Talking about the surveillance devices market in India Puneet Sabharwal, National Business Manager-AV Products, Canon India said, “Surveillance devices market is in a very nascent stage in India. But given the danger that public places today are prone to, the demand will soon shoot up.”



Apart from the police, defense and big corporates, leading malls also fall under the prospective customers segment vertical for surveillance cameras. Canon anticipates 80% to 85 % growth in this product category in the very first year of launch.



When asked whether Canon has partnered with any storage devices vendor to become OEM partner for the supply of storage medium to its surveillance cameras Puneet replied, “The Canon surveillance cameras would be based on 100% Canon hardware and its components would be manufactured in-house.” 



Incidentally, Seagate has also announced the market availability of its range of hard disk drives suited for surveillance devices from this April. D-Link India has also gotten into the fray of providing surveillance cameras, which underlines the lucre of this segment.



Incidentally, another item on Canon's agenda is phasing out its SVGA range of projectors from the market, while making way for high-resolution XGA and Super extended graphics array (SXGA) range. According to the data available with Canon, globally XGA and SXGA projectors, which are of 1024x768 and 1400x1050 resolution power respectively, contribute to over 70% of projector business there. While SVGA has 30% of market share to its credit in European and American markets, this is not the case with the Indian marketplace. Here the low-resolution SVGA range, which has been put in the category of obsolete technology by other markets, is still dominating and adds to 70% of projector business.



Providing more details about Canon's projector business focus Puneet said, “The projector market has been growing at a fast pace with a compound annual growth rate of almost 40% and Canon in this space is persistently registering two-fold growth. Since the market is upbeat and more and more people are coming forward to buy projectors, we want to present our customers only the most recent technology products. In line with this intention we will gradually phase from the market SVGA projectors that is a age-old technology.”



The vendor is also contemplating ramping up its channels network for AV products, of which 50% would be solution providers.