What does the record-breaking decline in US GDP by 32.9 percent projected for the whole of 2020 mean for machine vision? The consulting company Vision Markets gets to the bottom of this question in a short report.

The most important factor in this assessment is the fact that the frighteningly high decline of the US gross domestic product by almost one third cannot be compared with the predicted minus in Europe of around 12.5 percent. According to European counting - the isolated consideration of the second quarter of 2020 compared to the same period of the previous year - GDP in the USA fell by around 9.5 percent. Still a considerable decline, but panic is not the order of the day.

But what does this mean for machine vision?

Vision Markets emphasizes that money is still in the market, so investments will be postponed but not stopped. While the engineering sector remains sceptical, the consultancy sees light at the end of the tunnel for B2B investments, especially medium and long-term investments, due to low interest rates combined with a declining consumer market. However, it is important to remain agile and adaptable in order to be able to react to short-term developments.