Projections indicate the Asia Pacific market (excluding Japan) will pass EMEA revenues in the machine vision market by 2015.

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IMS Research (recently acquired by IHS Inc. (NYSE:IHS)) projects that Asia (excluding Japan) will be the largest region for machine vision revenues in 2016. 

“Japan has always been the largest market for machine vision in the Asia Pacific region,” commented John Morse, author of the latest machine vision report from IMS Research. “It has developed very sophisticated manufacturing over more than 40 years employing machine vision techniques in many applications, especially inspection and robot control. Despite this, its economic growth is currently slow largely due to the decreasing export demand. This is not expected to improve much over the next five years. Japan’s leading position is being eroded as other countries within the region embrace automation in their production facilities.” 

Figure 1 shows the three principal regions of the world market where Asia Pacific includes Japan. With Japan’s revenues included, the graph shows the region to be by far the largest and has been for many years. However, if Japan’s revenues are removed, as shown in Figure 2, the situation is quite different. The rest of Asia is collectively forecast to revenues of around $720 million in 2012, exceeding those generated in the Americas after this time. This rapid growth is expected to continue, passing EMEA revenues of $1.1 billion after 2015. 

The report projects that machine vision growth will be strongest in China, South Korea and Taiwan reflecting the general economic growth forecast in these countries. The ever increasing need to cut manufacturing costs and so become more competitive countering increasing labour and other costs will help drive machine vision adoption.

Morse adds, “Despite Japan’s low forecast growth rate, the Asia Pacific region as a whole remains extremely important to machine vision manufacturers, both in market size and growth potential.”