There is no question that the fire alarm industry is a mature, compliance-driven market. With a mature market comes slower growth and with compliance comes low margins. Yet while the fire industry cannot compare to the sizzle of video, the interactive-charged growth of intrusion, or the integration and cloud expansion of access control, there still are growth opportunities and advancements to capitalize on in 2014.
In this year’s market, growth is coming from newer technologies including emergency communications systems (ECS) and mass notification systems (MNS), carbon monoxide (CO) products and legislation, Internet protocol (IP) and wireless options. These, coupled with a very strong retrofit market (due to the new technologies and options), are driving the 2014 fire market.