At a press conference in Stuttgart, Dietmar Ley, CEO of Basler (Ahrensburg, Germany; www.baslerweb.com) and chairman of the Machine Vision Group of the VDMA (German Engineering Federation; Frankfurt am Main, Germany; www.vdma.org), described machine-vision market developments in Germany. He noted a projected total turnover among German vision companies in 2006 of €1.1 billion, a 9% increase from 2005. He also noted that, in 2005, 55% of the companies had fewer than 20 employees. Application-specific vision systems constituted 57% of the products sold; cameras constitute 55% of the components sold, with frame grabbers making up 13% and smart cameras an additional 15%.
Exports remain the growth engine of the German machine-vision industry, with 23% of total turnover going to the rest of Europe, 17% to the Americas, and 15% to Asia and the rest of the world. The percentage of total turnover exported from Germany rose from 44% in 2004 to 55% in 2005.
