China a big market for security sector

Updated: 2011-11-09 17:28

By Huang Yuli (chinadaily.com.cn)

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China a big market for security sector

Robert Zhu, Tyco's president for Asia Pacific Region, makes a presentation at the press conference. [Photo/China Daily]

Tyco, one of the world's leading security products and services providers, stays confident with Chinese market and plans to grab more business from governments, a top executive told China Daily.

The US company, which entered China 20 years ago, has achieved a pre-dominant market share in sectors including retailing, banking as well as public transport such as airports and subways, said Robert Zhu, Tyco's president for Asia Pacific Region.

Company figures show that it has taken over more than half of the security business in retailing, reached cooperation with the top five banks in China, including ICBC and ABC, and provided access systems for major airports, including the two in Shanghai.

"Our business expansion in China is rapid, especially over the recent three or four years," Zhu said.

He said he always sees China as full of potential. In 2009 where the financial crisis hit the globe he prevailed over all questioning and expanded the business in Chinese mainland.

The result turned out rewarding.

The company now has more than 20 offices in China, employing more than 800 from dozens at the beginning.

Though regulations sometimes affect the industry, like the government's tightening measures on real estate seriously affects the access and monitor business for buildings, Zhu said the policy has been much more open up in the past few years.

"Ten years ago when I backed to China the security staff at airports were all policemen, but now many of them have been replaced by employees from professional security companies," he noted, who was born in Beijing and joined the nationality of Singapore.

When asked about the company's next plan in China, Zhu said they expect more cooperation opportunities with the governments.

Just like many other foreign companies, a big headache Zhu and his team have in China is product piracy. Some local small companies directly copy their technology and take away their customers.

Although the company fought hard with the malpractices and won in three cases, they got small compensations that could hardly offset their huge expenses on researches, according to Zhu.

"Now we just focus on advancing our technology, making it more and more difficult to copy," he noted. "So even the pirated products finally came to the market, it should be several years later."

Tyco just released two new products of intellectual management platform in Shenzhen, which are intellectual building management systems that integrate different management function including access, elevator, monitor, vehicle and energy control to one system.