Airports and event venues are set to be the most affected industries with revenues set to decline between 13% and 42 % due to the global pandemic. Airports are the primary consumer of EWC equipment. However, due to the global pandemic airline and airport operator’s budgets have been significantly affected due to the sharp decline in air travel traffic.

Omdia expects that governments will continue to seek to work towards completing the security equipment upgrade plans despite the significant economic challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic. However, there will be significant delays in implementing larger tenders for new equipment as many government offices have been partially closed, and real-life demonstrations of equipment use were not able to be scheduled throughout 2020.

Smaller and regional airports may also opt to focus on servicing of existing equipment, delaying the purchase of more or new x-ray screening machines until normal operations resume.

The events industry will be slower to recover according to Omdia’s forecasting. Omdia expects that there will be a slower demand for EWC equipment in the events sector of the EWC market in 2021. Sectors where the use of EWC equipment is considered less than essential will likely see the slowest recovery in new shipments of equipment. Budgetary priorities of many companies will shift towards business preservation, new marketing campaigns to reenergise sluggish business operations, and any measures necessary to make the business environment safer for both employees and customers.

Anna Sliwon-Stewart, Senior Analyst & Research Manager, Security and Building Technologies at Omdia, commented: “While the pandemic has slowed down the growth in the EWC market revenues, the industry’s work on new solutions focused on leveraging the full capabilities of artificial intelligence, a wide range of terahertz-spectrum wave technology applications and new technologies for trace detection has continued.”

“The threat environment continues to evolve while the pandemic has elevated the concept of biological threat detection to a higher level in the spectrum of issues of concern in the public safety and security concept. This is likely to become the next issue of focus for the EWC equipment manufacturers, as well as stakeholders in the government and scientific community as the threat of future global pandemics is on the rise.”