Factory sales of aftermarket vehicle security products are expected to produce another year of stop-and-go results. Indeed, if you look at the table below, you’ll see that during the last three years, sales have been flat.

Nevertheless, the consumer electronics industry continues to invest considerable resources in product development. For example, there has been potentially significant progress in development of longer range and more capable two-way, remote control-based security systems. Until recently the distance limit for effectively locking and unlocking your doors, arming or disarming the alarm, starting the engine or activating the trunk release was about 1,000 feet.

But at the 2006 International CES, Directed became the long-distance champ when it introduced a two-way keychain remote system utilizing spread spectrum technology to achieve a one-mile operating range. To be marketed under the company’s Viper, Python and Clifford brands, the IntelliGuard 990X also comes with a dot matrix display on the remote with changeable, pre-programmed function icons on the display screen. Function icons are created through software and can be configured based on your security system’s features (previously, LCD remotes only offered permanent icons). The icons are selected through a menu interface by scrolling through available choices using a thumbwheel.

The industry’s product investment dollars are buying advances in protecting individual components from theft as well. Consider Sony’s innovative MEX-1GP. The headunit features a built-in 52-watt x 4 amp with front/rear/sub preamp outputs and AM/FM/CD/MP3/WMA functionality.  But that’s just for starters. The clever bit is that it employs a removable faceplate that doubles as a 1-GB flash memory storage device. Users can attach the USB-enabled faceplate, which Sony calls a Giga Panel, to a laptop and transfer song files for listening in the car. That means no attention-attracting CDs or jewel cases scattered throughout the vehicle. A Windows XP-driven PC will recognize the faceplate as it would any other flash drive, and file transfer is a drag-and drop procedure that does not require special software.