In its fourth annual video surveillance trends white paper, IMS Research has offered its predictions for 2013 and beyond. Perhaps not surprisingly, image quality and mobile are at the top of the list.

Despite placing image quality first on its list, that doesn’t necessarily mean more megapixels. In fact, IMS doesn’t expect higher megapixel resolutions to be a mass-market trend. Rather, it expects new technology developments and camera features that improve image quality to become the key battleground.

On the mobile side, IMS cites recent increased buzz around the capability to wirelessly stream video from a mobile video surveillance camera back to a control center, which it says brings a number of advantages. For example, a control room’s ability to instantly view an incident live allows for immediate assessment of the situation and more effective guidance for officers on the ground.

Because network video surveillance can be an overly complex topic, IMS also predicts that 2013 will be the year that suppliers focus on developing products that are easy to install, operate and maintain. In other words, 2013 will be all about making it more straightforward for end users.

Here is IMS Research’s top 10 for 2013:

1.      New battle ground in image quality

2.      Mobile streaming — the next gear of mobile video surveillance

3.      India to remain a high-growth market

4.      Keeping it simple in 2013

5.      Intelligent video surveillance

6.      Private cloud — the future for enterprise video surveillance systems?

7.      Remote video applications

8.      Chinese companies looking West

9.      Video surveillance goes vertical

10.  Video content analysis and video metadata as “big data”

For more IMS Research analysis of these trends, visit http://www.imsresearch.com/press-release/Video_Surveillance_Trends_for_2013