Enlarge / A Los Angeles police officer wears an AXON body camera during the Immigrants Make America Great March to protest actions being taken by the Trump administration on February 18, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (credit: David McNew/Getty Images)

Axon, the company formerly known as Taser, has acquired its largest rival, VieVu—setting up a near-monopoly in the market for body-worn cameras.

While Axon already has contracts with most large cities in America, VieVu beat out Axon for a number of large contracts, including those for the New York Police Department, the Miami-Dade Police Department, and the Phoenix Police Department, among others.

Last year, Axon got even more aggressive in pursuing its industry dominance by offering any American law enforcement agency free body cameras and a year’s worth of access to the company’s cloud storage service, Evidence.com.

Digital Ally, now one of the company’s smaller rivals, did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.

While the prevalence of body-worn cameras is accelerating, they are still far from ubiquitous.

“Only 20 percent [of cops] have a camera,” Rick Smith, the company’s CEO, told Ars in 2017. “Eighty percent are going out with a gun and no camera. We only need 20- to 30-percent conversion to make it profitable,” he added. “We expect 80 percent to become customers.”

The move has some privacy watchers concerned.