According to Canon’s President and CEO, Fujio Mitarai, “A major focus for the next phase is increasing our business-to-business (B2B) sales, and of course security cameras – which is a huge market – is part of that.” As it stands research by IHS has forecasted the surveillance camera market to grow by two-thirds and is expected to be worth $27 billion by 2017. Canon aims to reach annual sales of about $1 billion from that sector alone in their five year plan which they expect to kick off in 2016.
Canon will not be the first camera manufacturer to venture into the surveillance camera market as Panasonic has been doing it for a while now, with the company reporting $136 million in sales the last quarter. Sony has also been reported to be interested in the surveillance camera market as well and will be looking to leverage their image sensor technology.