Profile View from the East


Greg Blackman charts the meteoric rise of Chinese firm Hikvision, one of the top suppliers of video surveillance equipment that has now turned its sights on industrial vision


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ne of the companies exhibiting for the first time at last year’s Vision show in Stuttgart, Germany was Chinese


firm Hikvision. Te name might have been new for visitors to the European trade fair, or even those working in the machine vision industry in general, but anyone knowledgeable about the security market will be aware of Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology. In 2015 it was ranked number one supplier of video surveillance equipment globally, accounting for 19.5 per cent global market share, according to IHS Markit, and 30 per cent share in China, Shawn Huo, general manager of international business at Hikvision, told Imaging and Machine Vision Europe. In 2016 the company generated revenue of $4.67 billion and has more than 20,000 employees; it has 35 branch offices in China, with its headquarters in Hangzhou, and 29 offices outside China in 150 countries. Te company was established in 2001


building video compression cards based on the H.264 algorithm. Te big selling point of the video compression technology was its efficiency. Video took up less space when stored. In 2006 Hikvision expanded to producing CCTV cameras for surveillance and other vertical markets such as healthcare and traffic. Ten, it began planning to diversify


with what would become Hikrobot; it’s this subsidiary that contains the machine vision product line offering industrial cameras, vision controllers, lenses, soſtware and smart cameras. Te other two segments of Hikrobot are mobile robots for use in warehouses and other areas, and industrial unmanned aerial vehicles. Huo explained that in order to find a new


growth point while at the same time focusing on the company’s core competency of video technology, Hikvision decided to expand to other business fields based on vision technology. Machine vision is a logical field for


Hikvision. One of the advantages of being the number one global video surveillance equipment supplier is the economies of scale the position affords when it comes to sourcing image sensors and lenses. Hikvision is Sony’s largest image sensor customer outside of the mobile phone sector; it sold around 60 million cameras worldwide last year, with a big proportion of sensors coming from Sony, although it also uses On Semiconductor, Aptina and other suppliers. ‘We have a good relationship with all major sensor vendors,’ Huo said, ‘which means we always get the latest technology and support on price, delivery and technical support.’ Hikvision’s machine vision product line includes area scan models offering a choice of


Hikvision’s machine vision product line offers area scan and line scan models, a 3D


camera, smart cameras and an industrial vision box


Shawn Huo, general manager of international business at Hikvision


CMOS and CCD sensors, USB3 Vision and GigE Vision interfaces, and global and rolling shutter versions. Tere’s a line scan model, a 3D camera, industrial smart camera versions and a smart camera with a Movidius VPU platform for parallel high-speed image processing. Resolutions range from 0.3 megapixels to 29 megapixels and the cameras use sensors from Sony, On Semi and others. In addition, Hikvision supplies a range of industrial lenses, including telecentric options, as well as an industrial vision box with Intel quad-core 1.91GHz processor and integrated GPU. Hikvision has a world class lab for audit


testing and certifying equipment, and has partnerships with organisations to ensure its products reach a high level of quality assurance. Another advantage of being such a large company is that Hikvision has an extensive R&D infrastructure, both for hardware and soſtware. It has around 10,000 employees working on R&D and every year spends six to seven per cent of its revenue on R&D, Huo stated. ‘We are a technology-oriented company,’ he said. ‘We believe that technology is the future to make the product suitable for the market.’ It has set up an R&D institute specifically


for deep learning, artificial intelligence, big data and other advanced technologies, the


12 Imaging and Machine Vision Europe • December 2017/January 2018 @imveurope www.imveurope.com


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