North American sales of machine vision systems and components grew 6% to $1.8 billion through September, which is the market’s highest total for the first nine months of a year thus far, according to the AIA.
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The machine vision systems category—which includes smart cameras and application-specific machine vision systems (ASMV)—saw a year-over-year increase of 6% to $1.5 billion during this time. Smart cameras decreased 1% to $220.6 million while ASMVs increased 8% to $1.3 billion.
Additionally, machine vision components, including cameras, lighting, and software, grew 5% to $164.7 million. Lighting grew by 22%, while imaging boards grew 10% and software 9%.
"Experts in the industry continue to be optimistic for growth in machine vision cameras, software, and imaging boards in the next six months," said Alex Shikany, AIA’s Director of Market Analysis. "They are not as optimistic about machine vision system markets, however, as the majority expect them to remain flat in the next two quarters."
Machine vision sales in North America were able to achieve these figures despite a notable decrease in third quarter performance, due mainly to a decrease in sales of machine vision systems (13%), which is the first year over year decrease since the fourth quarter of 2012. When combined with the 2% growth in machine vision components, total North American sales for machine vision decreased by 11% in the third quarter of 2015.
"We saw indications in the second quarter of 2015 that a cyclical downturn was coming," Shikany added. "After reaching record high levels at the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015, two of the largest categories we measure, ASMV systems and smart cameras have declined substantially. AIA has seen cyclical downturns similar to this in the third quarter of 2011 and the fourth quarter of 2013."
AIA President Jeff Burnstein, also commented on the report: "We are encouraged to see the record year to date performance in 2015 for machine vision sales in North America, but recognize the market’s cyclicality," he said. "Despite the market cooling in the third quarter, we continue to see more companies than ever before interested in applying machine vision to their operations."
View more information on the AIA.
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