The worldwide machine vision market appears to be on the road to recovery after a very difficult six months, according to IMS Research, which has tracked it by quarter for the past two years. Data for the second quarter of 2009 indicates that the EMEA and American markets levelled out and EMEA experienced only a slight decline on the previous quarter. Asian revenues grew sequentially 10% after a very large first quarter decline. According to IMS Research, there are reasons for hope, but the question is: will the improvements be sustained? John Morse, who manages the machine vision tracker from the company’s headquarters in the UK, believes it will; although recovery is likely to be steady rather that meteoric.
“IMS Research runs market trackers for many industrial automation product groups as well as machine vision” explained Morse, “The tracker aggregates data submitted by companies that supply a great variety of machine-vision related products; feedback from the participants suggest that it is fast becoming an important general industry indicator and forecasting tool.. New machine-vision suppliers are always welcome to participate as the more participants, the greater the accuracy of the data the tracker provides.
