The machine vision market, will return to single-digit growth in 2024 following declines in 2023.
APAC (Asia–Pacific, 34.5%) is the largest market for machine vision products, which use cameras and sensors to capture images and then use software to analyse them, followed by EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa, 28.4%), the Americas (21.9%), and Japan (15.2%). New vendors and the growth of new applications, such as mobile robots, are having a significant impact on the growth of the machine vision market.
After a slow year in 2023, the market is expected to return to growth in 2024, according to market intelligence specialist
Interact Analysis. While global automation markets have grown, 2023 was a challenging year for machine vision vendors and total revenues declined from $6.5 billion in 2022 to $6.3 billion last year. In the wake of this contraction, the market is forecast to record single-digit growth of around 1.4% in 2024.
While price pressures will persist for machine vision vendors in the first half of 2024, order books are expected to start refilling in the second half of the year. The machine vision market is anticipated to recover from 2025 onwards, in line with Interact Analysis’ predictions for manufacturing and machinery production growth. Between 2022 and 2028, it will grow by an estimated CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 6.4%, with revenues increasing from $6.5 billion to $9.3 billion over the forecast period. The Asia-Pacific (APAC) region will be a big driver of this growth.
Looking at the market for machine vision by application, inspection is dominant, with this segment representing over 40% of use cases in 2022 and by 2028, inspection is is forecast to be worth around $3.9 billion. Resulting from the strong outlook for mobile robots, autonomous driving is forecast to have the largest CAGR between 2022 and 2028 (20.8%), followed by bin-picking (19.2%), which will benefit from deployment with industrial robots across a wide range of manufacturing industries.
Jonathan Sparkes, research analyst at Interact Analysis, said: “The top three machine vision vendors,
Keyence,
Cognex and Teledyne accounted for nearly one-third of global revenues in 2023. Due to the stronger performance of end-customers in APAC, vendors in that region were expected to have had a better year than those with less exposure in 2023. In general, APAC suppliers — particularly those in China — took market share from those that conduct more of their business in other global regions.
“Despite a plethora of mergers and acquisitions in recent years, the machine vision market is still considered fragmented. New vendors continue to enter the market, with over 200 active worldwide. We are seeing increasing activity from new vendors in China in particular, as well as in those territories where machine vision products are increasingly being used for autonomous driving and bin-picking.”