Historically, CCTV cameras were focused on simple surveillance, but now, use cases have expanded to include disaster monitoring, crowd control, health emergency services alerts, and congestion control in public spaces. The broadening range of use cases and increased adoption are primarily a result of more sophisticated AI software, cheaper computing, and advances in network technology. AI-based surveillance technology is being adopted around the world, with China being the foremost adopter.
AI has allowed for public surveillance to become more sophisticated, introducing automated use cases, such as perimeter monitoring, dangerous object detection, vandalism detection, sentiment analysis, facial recognition, and suicide prevention. Vehicles can also be monitored using automatic number plate recognition.
This report summarises the status and forecasts from the CCTV Application Group found in the Transforma Insights Connected Things IoT forecast. The report provides a description of what is covered in the Application Group, as well as top-level figures from the forecast that provide details on how many connected devices will be installed, the types of communication technology used and the total revenue opportunity. Full details are accessible through the IoT Forecast tool.
It examines the key factors that are influencing the development of the CCTV market, including:
This section first explains that CCTVs have now been widely adopted in public spaces and studies have proved that this has reduced various crimes and violations in surveillance areas. For instance, CCTVs have reduced drug-related crimes by around 20% and crimes in car parking areas by around 50%. It also talks about the countries that are at the forefront of CCTV adoption, including China, India, Russia, the US, and the UK.
This section of the report first explains that these days, a large number of CCTVs are being monitored by AI (at least, 79 countries are doing so), and its emerging benefits, including fewer incidence of false alarms or inaccuracies and reduced operational cost. It also explains how CCTVs are also being increasingly used to support a wide range of public surveillance use cases such as perimeter monitoring, dangerous object detection, vandalism detection, sentiment analysis, and suicide prevention.
Then, the focus shifts to the increasing use of ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) or ALPR cameras, and how they are used to check vehicle details with law enforcement agencies’ databases of stolen vehicles and criminal activity. It then explains the factors leading to the increasing adoption of these ANPR cameras, including the simplicity of their adoption, but quickly points out that the efficacy of ANPR cameras is up for debate. Besides, multiple concerns of privacy violations have also been raised.
This section discusses how AI has enabled multiple opportunities to resell anonymised data captured through local authorities' cameras, depending on local regulations. For instance, a retailer can display ads based on demographics of passers-by and revenues generated through such commercial arrangements can, in turn, support local authorities in expanding and upgrading CCTV deployments.
It also explains that AI-enabled, 4K CCTV systems place heavy demands on digital infrastructure, requiring greater storage, faster processing, and higher bandwidth. Therefore, combining edge computing with 5G can address this by processing data closer to where it is generated, reducing continuous video streaming across networks and transmitting only relevant footage to control centres.
This section first explains that while camera prices may not fall much further, the capabilities of off-the-shelf devices continue to improve, which could further reduce operating costs. However, it claims that prohibitive maintenance budgets, vandalism, power failures, damage to cables by construction companies, and poor maintenance by CCTV companies are some of the factors that may negatively impact the market. Besides, data security, cyber-attacks, and privacy rights are other concerns, which have made countries like Canada and the UK try to strike a balance between the need for surveillance and the privacy rights of the people.
This section lists the major communication technologies used by CCTV cameras, such as Short Range and Cellular. It also explains that since 5G offers faster speeds, less interference, and lower latency, it will help CCTV cameras provide better video analysis capabilities and greater volumes of data, to which AI-based algorithms can be applied.
It also provides a few examples of relevant IoT-enabled CCTV deployments, like the Seoul Metropolitan government allocating KRW51.2 billion (USD34.8 million) to deploy smart cameras.
The key vendors section lists some of the main providers of products and services related to the CCTV market, such as Axis Communications, Axxonsoft, Bosch Security, CP Plus, Dahua Security, Flock Safety, Hikvision, Honeywell, Huawei, and Intellivision.
The report provides profiles of the various vendors including aspects most relevant to this Application Group, such as product offerings, pricing, financial results, and technology.
In the market forecasts section, we provide a summary of the forecasts from the Transforma Insights IoT Forecast Database:
The report charts the growth in the number of devices, which will grow from 658 million in 2025 to 829 million in 2035.
Transforma Insights forecasts are compiled on a country-by-country basis. This report includes a regional summary, showing splits between Australasia, Greater China, North America, Europe, Japan, Latin America, MENA, Russia & Central Asia, South East Asia, South Korea, India & South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Transforma Insights’ IoT forecasts include splits between the various connectivity technologies as follows: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mMTC, 5G non-mMTC, LPWA (non-mMTC), Satellite, Short Range, and Other.
This section discusses which technologies will be used in the CCTV application group.
This part of the report discusses the market growth in terms of revenue (module revenue, service wrap revenue, and VAC revenue). Transforma Insights estimates that the revenue in the CCTV Application Group will grow at a CAGR of 3.2%.
