The North American machine vision market has fallen three per cent in the first nine months of 2016, according to statistics from the AIA. Sales were $1.7 billion for the nine-month period.
Despite this, a notable increase of seven per cent to $574 million has been observed in the Q3 of 2016, compared to the same period in 2015. Smart cameras have proven to be the most promising technology, showing a 10 per cent increase in sales in the first nine months of 2016, and a 24 per cent increase in the third quarter.
The systems category of North American machine vision sales saw a decrease of three per cent to $1.45 billion over the first nine months of 2016, while the component category experienced a two per cent decrease to $237 million. This contrasts sales in the European markets, which saw an increase of eight per cent in 2016, following a 10 per cent increase in 2015.
‘The performance of this market year to date was impacted most heavily from a cyclical downturn in the first two quarters of the year,’ said Alex Shikany, AIA’s director of market analysis. ‘The cyclicality was influenced by a number factors, one of which was a soft global semiconductor market. The good news looking forward is that according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, the global semiconductor market just posted its highest ever monthly sales figure in September. The machine vision market in North America improved as well in that timeframe.’
‘Vision and imaging technology is a key player in a variety of automation solutions today,’ said Jeff Burnstein, president of AIA. ‘More companies are interested in vision and automation in today’s market than ever before. Growing global trends such as autonomous vehicles, vision guided robotics, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) rely heavily on vision and imaging, which bodes well for the future of this industry.’
AIA has seen the rising interest in vision and imaging reflected in the growth of its membership and networking events. In November, AIA reached a new membership milestone with 356 member companies from across the globe.
