By May, every car sold in the US will be required to include a backup camera, and car makers have been gradually adding them to vehicles to meet that deadline. But there’s been no slowdown in aftermarket sales, according to suppliers who expect sales to continue to rise for at least another two years.
Vision Tech America, maker of Boyo cameras said sales last year were up substantially over 2016. “Backup camera sales are as active as ever,” said Brandmotion’s Jeff Varick. Rydeen reported substantial increases in camera unit sales last year and Rostra said sales were up.
The market appears to be in a sweet spot where the inclusion of cameras in new cars has raised demand from consumers who now want a camera in an older car that may have lacked one. About 1 in 4 cars on the road have a backup camera, said Varick, so there is still plenty of room for growth.
Rydeen said the aftermarket will benefit from broken OEM cameras in the future.
But all of these suppliers are expanding their business into other driver safety products in anticipation of lower camera sales down the line. Vision Tech estimates products including multi camera systems, blind spot detection, and dashcams now account for about 30 percent of its sales.
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) predicts unit sales of rear view cameras will continue to rise through 2021 while shipments in dollars will flatten in 2021. The industry is expected to ship (wholesale) $60 million in rear view cameras this year, up from $51 million last year and increasing to $69 million in 2019. Unit sales will cross the million mark next year to 1.1 million units.
Aftermarket backup cameras sell at about three times the rate of dashcams, whose sales will hit $39 million this year, increasing to $46 million next year on sales of 342,000 units, said the CTA.
