Manufacturers of smart products see the future

In a recently published report on the European machine vision market, IMS Research has discovered that the product types, such as smart cameras, are rapidly accounting for a greater share of the market revenue.

Whilst the sale of more traditional PC-based products (camera and frame grabbers) has fallen over the past two years, sales of smart sensors, smart cameras and compact vision systems have continued to grow. In 2002 the revenue share of these non-PC-based products was 26.1%, up from 22.1% in 2001.

IMS predicts that the machine vision market in Europe will grow at an average annual rate of 11.6% each year. Demand for these products is primarily driven by the increasing demand for better production efficiency and quality control. The highest levels of growth, approach 20%, are forecast for the smart sensor and smart cameras product groups resulting in both more than doubling in value.

Report author, John Devlin commented: "Whilst the sale of PC-based vision systems has fallen recently it should be remembered that the growth experienced prior to this was exceptional. One of the main drivers on growth was the ICT (information and communication technologies) industry, which tends to favour PC-based systems.