security events / review CPSE: China’s power continues to grow This year has been somewhat unstable for the Chinese economy, but at the CPSE security show in Shenzhen, stagnation and recession seemed far away. “This year we see more newcomers than before. There are a lot of IT and Internet companies joining this industry”, says Michael Yang, CEO of the show organiser. By Henrik Söderlund CPSE, the most crowded security exhibition in the world. CPSE in Shenzhen is hard to summarise. The show is huge – last time there were 138,000 visitors according to the organiser. That seems like a very large number, however, there is no doubt it is bigger than both Ifsec in London and Security Essen in Germany. The show floor is 110,000 square metres and somewhere between 10 to 15 per cent of the exhibiting companies and about 8 to10 per cent of the visitors were international according to the organiser. A forecast Walking around the giant Hall 1 in Shenzhen, the most striking observation is the great number of companies that are displaying video surveillance products. Video surveillance really dominated the main hall and almost all the big Western brands were there; Sony, Samsung, Axis, Bosch, Schneider, Panasonic and more. However, there were also a huge number of Chinese brands that did not only exhibit, but also had big stands with many products and a multitude of visitors. “CPSE is like a forecast for the industry. Now China is the manufacturing and trading centre for the whole security industry and at every CPSE, you will see the future of the industry. This year, many people have said that the market has been quiet, but when you look at the crowd here, I am very confident about the future”, Michael Yang says. 4K and total solutions 4K has been around for some time now and cannot really be considered as a new trend, but it was obvious that many companies were putting a lot of effort into marketing their 4K cameras and almost every booth in Hall 1 seemed to have a 4K sign, including a great deal of Chinese manufacturers. Sony was one of the companies really displaying the difference between 4K and lower resolution cameras by comparing live recordings of a toy model. Another current trend is the focus on total solutions. It could be seen in Shenzhen, and not least among the Chinese companies. “In China we have a national promotion of internet plus, that means everything has to be connected. Many companies are releasing home automation products with internet connectivity. You can monitor everything in your house from mobile apps,” says Michael Yang. He also stresses that there were more video analytics at the show than before. Of course there were also access control solutions and alarms on display at CPSE, but not so much in Hall 1 – instead they were mostly to be found in the smaller Hall 6. IT companies more interested Michael Yang noted that there were many new companies exhibiting and some of these come from the IT and the internet industry. He says: “For example Seagate and Toshiba would normally not exhibit by themselves, they would join a partner, but this year they exhibit alone and this means that the security industry is becoming more and more important for them.” Huawei is one example of the big and well-known companies do not traditionally have their roots in the security industry but was exhibiting at the show. The Huawei booth was actually one of the biggest at CPSE and the company was displaying its network cameras (including 4K), a video content management platform and a few of its partner products, such as Axis and Intel. The Chinese giants The two largest and most crowded stands were Hikvision and Dahua. Hikvision had mounted one of its cameras on a drone, recording the surrounding crowd and displaying the images on a big screen. When the drone was launched, it attracted a crowd of people to the booth. Except for a huge array of cameras, amongst other things, Hikvision was showcasing its IVMS-5200 VMS platform, a centralised and open surveillance management system, designed to target a broad range of vertical markets. Uniview is one of the largest Chinese video surveillance manufacturers and the company’s technical director, Aaron Chao, was happy with the show. He said he could see two major trends. “I think that branding has become much more important. A few years ago, many companies focused on OEMs, but now everyone knows it is more important to build your own brand channel and brand name. The other trend is that more and more players in the Chinese se- curity industry are paying attention to total solutions, not only to single products”, he explained. The future of the Chinese market This year has seen increased worry about the Chinese economy and growth, and as the show was taking place, it was reported that Chinese manufacturing had shrunk for the third consecutive month in October. However, all of the Chinese manufacturers that Detektor magazine spoke to at the show were positive and confident about the future. Michael Yang says: “I think this high growth will continue for at least 3 to 5 years, because there are still tons of opportunities in China, and there remains a massive scope to grow internationally, for example in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. There are so many opportunities.” Uniview’s Technical Director Aaron Chao agreed: “The big Chinese players still have a very small portion of the international market share. We think in the future, lets say within 3 to 5 years, Chinese companies will gain more and more market share. There are really some golden opportunities.” AR Media had its own stand and promoted the magazine Detektor. Security News Every Day – www. securityworldhotel.com