Since 2014, the growth has been exponential, with 18.4 million added in 2022 alone. The EtherCAT chips sold in the respective year are counted, without taking into account the chips for Bus Terminals. A modular I/O station counts as a single node and not as 20, even if it consists of 20 EtherCAT Bus Terminals. "The chip numbers are exact numbers, but there is a certain time lag: not every chip becomes a sold EtherCAT device in the same calendar year," comments Martin Rostan, Executive Director of the EtherCAT Technology Group and at Beckhoff Automation for EtherCAT aLicensing responsible, the counting. With EtherCAT - similar to CAN - only the chip manufacturers need a license and the device manufacturers have already paid the low license fee with the purchase of the chips. Beckhoff finances the expenses of the EtherCAT Technology Group from the income from the chip licenses: membership in the world's largest fieldbus association is free of charge.

"Because we don't exactly know the quantities of the FPGA IP core-based implementations, we have so far held back from publishing node numbers," says Martin Rostan. "But the reported quantities of the currently 12 EtherCAT chip providers are now so large that a possible lack of clarity when estimating the FPGA numbers no longer plays a role: they account for less than 10 percent of the total numbers. We also considered multiprotocol chips in relation to the market share of the protocols. On the one hand, the numbers are based on very reliable sources and, on the other hand, they have been determined very conservatively: there are probably significantly more EtherCAT devices."

With the exception of 2019, where the EtherCAT quantities could not escape the sideways development of the automation market, growth has been exponential for several years. "Three years ago we still believed in an outlier upwards, but now the trend has solidified: the exponential growth is continuing," says Rostan. “The Asian market, especially China, is developing the fastest. But EtherCAT is also making better and better progress in North America. And in Europe, where EtherCAT has its origins, EtherCAT has been very strong for some time.