A new machine vision market report from the Automated Imaging Association (AIA) shows that machine vision sales of components and systems in North America have clearly entered a recovery phase.
Overall machine vision sales increased by 34.4 per cent in first quarter 2010 over weak sales occurring one year earlier in first quarter 2009.
The findings of the report, entitled Quarterly Machine Vision Sales Tracking Report, are especially encouraging when compared to the results of AIA's annual market study, Machine Vision Markets – 2009 Results and Forecasts to 2014, which found that machine vision sales in 2009 declined by 29.2 per cent on average from 2008.
The report also showed that improvement occurred across all major machine vision supplier markets, including cameras, lighting, optics, imaging boards, software, application-specific machine vision systems and smart cameras. As a whole, major vision component sales increased 57.2 per cent, while machine vision system sales rose by 31.3 per cent.
In addition to determining sales results, the report also summarises industry expectations about sales growth for the next six months compared to the present. The report found that participating companies were nearly equally split between those that expected sales to increase during the next two quarters and those that believe sales will remain more or less equal in volume to first quarter 2010 sales.
'The results of the new report leave little doubt that machine vision sales have entered a period of recovery, however, it must be recognised that the robust rates of growth for machine vision product markets also reflect severely depressed sales in 2009,' noted Paul Kellett, AIA's director of market analysis. 'Based on industry expectations, market growth over 2009 levels will probably continue to occur in 2010 even if growth over first quarter 2010 levels fails to materialise,' Kellett added.
The report is available to all participating AIA members. In addition to the new report and its annual market study, AIA provides regular reports on the health of the machine vision market and economic trends that impact the industry at Market Data and Trends, which is a special section of the Machine Vision Online website.
