Significant Reductions

The downturn in economic and industrial activity will have a significant effect on sales of machine vision hardware, according to IMS Research. As a result, market forecasts published in May 2008 have been revised to reflect the current market conditions. In the fourth quarter of 2008, machine vision companies saw, on average, their sales fall by 15 % from the fourth quarter of 2007. Some have seen up to a 50 % decline in sales revenues in the first two months of 2009, although there are great variations depending on the industries they serve. As a result IMS Research has reduced the worldwide forecast for machine vision hardware (2008–2009) from growth of 7 % to a revenue reduction of 13.4 %. Sales to automotive, semiconductor and related industries are the worst affected. Sales to medical and infrastructure-related industries are faring better than most at present; this is expected to continue, despite the longer lead times associated with infrastructure projects.