Interesting, how can they stay in business at these prices and how bad their quality when budget Hiks are "killing them"
I'm not sure honestly. Being totally serious here too.
In my case, and I would assume some others were/are like me, I did not take the Hiks very seriously when I first ran into them as I assumed they were just home use cheapo cameras. I just figured that I was getting a better camera with ACTi, Axis and Vivotek who I was using as the price meant better quality. I was wrong. I have had 10x better reliability out of the Hiks for multiple reasons. Less surge damage, less water leakage, no focus creep like ACTi has horribly, I even talked to a couple other long term installers and they too said you could sneeze and kill an ACTi camera. One guy said they installed 40 at a school and he was pretty sure they had replaced every single camera in a few years.
Lots of companies manage to sell super expensive cameras and stay around, look at these for example:
http://www.a1securitycameras.com/arecont-vision/
I was recently at a security conference and they were presenting and I attended to see what they had. $2000 cameras that run at 3.5 FPS max! They have some neat stuff I suppose but I can absolutely stomp those prices with Hik and they admit it. They want sales guys to show them why this is better than Hik, as "that is the cheap not reliable solution" for a customer. They say you need less due to the high MP (also kind of not true, overview sure but you are not getting faces with those cameras) but when I can purchase 15 3mp Hiks for one of those how do they stay around? I'll take 15 camera coverage over one all day every day.
Arecont Vision will fly you and your potential customer out to see the facility if needed, all on their dime, all kinds of things to help close a sale. That is not free and you can tell in the camera prices! The margin on them is astounding in some cases. For some people these cameras may be a great solution but I have to imagine this is getting to be a harder and harder sale with the new blood coming in. I could kind of tell that in the conference really.
I then went to the Hikvision conference and I bet 70% of the room had not ever used one or seen one work in person. Most people were very, very skeptical of the brand as they were "cheap Chinese" cameras (this view was pushed by all other camera manufacturers, kind of sneering at those who would sell
those cameras) and these were all installers for the most part. It was very interesting to see people who were unfamiliar with the brand learn a little about them.
I honestly forget the numbers Hik mentioned but it was something like 300% year over year growth this year and has been over 150% growth for like 4 years in a row? Whatever the specific numbers the growth was staggering and I'm quite sure Axis, ACTi and others are not seeing numbers like that! The only legitimate complaint guys that had installed them really had was support was hard to come by, hold times were super long and it is due to them growing shipments faster than the company backend. They were supposed to be opening a new Canadian support call center and said they were having trouble staffing the quality people they needed so it was going slower than they wanted.
I say who needs support? That's what these forums are for!
