Interview: Thomas Lausten on Mobotix and Konica Minolta

Konica Minolta has been a majority shareholder in Mobotix since 2016. The two companies have used this connection to work more closely together and to jointly develop solutions. Mobotix solutions are offered by the Japanese company worldwide, and Mobotix CEO Thomas Lausten sees a “fantastic opportunity” for his company to attain long-term growth. GIT SECURITY spoke with him about the development of the cooperation of both companies.

GIT SECURITY: Mr. Lausten, Konica Minolta invested in Mobotix in 2016. How would you sum up the past six years of belonging to this Japanese optical, medical and office technology company?

Thomas Lausten: We have built up a close cooperation with Konica Minolta over the past six years. It is spread across numerous activities – for example, the joint development of AI-based video solutions that can be sold by both partners of Konica Minolta as well as Mobotix partners. They are aimed above all at our industrial, healthcare, and retail customers but also those in other industries.
In addition, we have also started a partnership with Konica Minolta that allows them to offer Mobotix solutions to their customers worldwide. This was carefully tailored to our sales channel and partner strategy to avoid any conflicts. That is a fantastic opportunity for Mobotix to secure long-term growth and allow further investment in research and development.

How is the integration of Mobotix and Konica Minolta solutions going?

Thomas Lausten: We have analyzed the market developments and trends for the coming year in detail. The heightened concentration on quality, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence matches our vision of developing video solutions to German standards that exceed the capabilities of human sight. Our new product strategy allows us to offer complete video solutions that align with our well-known focus on decentralized technology – but that also work together with centralized solutions, our hub platform for example. In general, we select our developments to meet the specific needs of our customers in selected vertical markets.

In your opinion, what are the next technology trends going to be in the near future – and what innovations can we expect from Mobotix and Konica Minolta?

Thomas Lausten: We estimate that the global trends will be determined by further optimization of image quality, edge computing and AI solutions, whereby user friendliness and data quality will be foremost. Vaxtor is a good example of this trend. Data is precisely read, even when it originates from a moving vehicle. Video surveillance solutions in general will expand beyond just classic security solutions to being a key tool, for example for customer analysis in the context of production processes, preventative analysis purposes, etc. The ‘Forxai’ platform from Konica will provide further developments in these sectors – and the R&D at Mobotix is concentrating on this too.

Are there already special solutions in which the products of Mobotix and Konica Minolta are mutually integrated?

Thomas Lausten: Yes. We began a number of joint development projects during the last few years – in particular in relation to the P7 camera platform and ‘Activity Sensor AI’ object recognition. On the whole, we like to take new approaches to innovation in selected vertical markets and developments, for example for the industry, the public sector, and the energy and healthcare markets. Our business development managers work closely with customers in these sectors and feed their ideas directly to our R&D teams in Langmeil and Madrid where they can be further developed. We want to further strengthen this type of communication.

Read all about the latest collaboration of Mobotix, i-PRO and Konica Minolta here.