In recent years, industrial sensors have maintained a high growth rate, but the overall market has shown a decline in growth in 2019.
With the rapid development of the concept of Industry 4.0, to implement Industry 4.0, the introduction of sensors has become necessary, so the industrial market has begun to start the demand for sensors. Sensors can meet various application requirements in a factory manufacturing environment. Including predictive maintenance and automation of machinery production equipment, asset tracking and supply chain, real-time monitoring and calibration, vibration detection and anti-tampering, calculation of oil and electricity consumption, and flow calculation and water level monitoring.
Industrial sensors have maintained a high growth rate in recent years, but the overall market has shown a decline in growth in 2019.
In the context of the overall decline in sensor market growth, there are still bright spots and opportunities. Among them, products with low technical thresholds such as photoelectric and proximity switches, under the pressure of the economic downturn, some customers put the importance of equipment costs in front, and there are new opportunities for domestic manufacturers' products and foreign manufacturers' economic products. In products such as RFID and machine vision, with the improvement of automation, the production line that did not originally require such sensors to be upgraded has created a demand for purchase; in addition, manufacturers’ development of sensor application scenarios has also brought new opportunities to some traditional sensors. .
1. Industrial sensors usher in opportunities in 2020
Opportunity 1: The impact of the localization of photoelectric/proximity switches
In recent years, with the technological development of domestic manufacturers, the strength of domestic sensors has been able to meet the requirements of mid-range customers and seize the share of foreign manufacturers with price advantages. In order to cope with competition, some foreign-funded manufacturers have introduced economical products and achieved certain results.
Opportunity 2. Sensor manufacturers develop new product types
Different from the previous manufacturers focusing on the sensors they are good at, in recent years, more and more manufacturers hope to use new products to improve corporate performance. Among them, visual sensors and RFID are the focus of manufacturers' attention. Some manufacturers have launched new categories of products or focused on promoting new categories of products.
Opportunity 3: The impact of the new crown epidemic on the sensor market
Sensor sales in the first quarter of 2020 will be greatly affected, and the products cannot effectively complete sales orders and shipments.
For the whole year of 2020, the sensor will be limited by the epidemic. Automotive demand in major downstream industries has postponed rather than disappeared. The electronics industry has benefited from the changes in 5G and mobile phone folding screens. The current short-term demand for medical devices such as ventilators has increased. With the global spread of the epidemic, medical device manufacturers are worthy of attention.
2. Market analysis of main types of sensors
Photoelectric/proximity switch: basically remain flat, domestic manufacturers rise
The overall market for optoelectronics and proximity switches was basically flat in 2019. Affected by the decline in the automotive industry, the sales performance of most German manufacturers and high-end Japanese manufacturers of optoelectronics and proximity switches slowed down relative to 2018.
As a product with a low technical threshold, in 2019 and in the future, foreign manufacturers will gradually show two development directions in the strategy of photoelectric switches and proximity switches: one is a company with strong technical strength, gradually moving towards customized services or difficult installation environments Products; the other direction is through the research and development of economical products, in the less demanding market, relying on its own brand influence and industry reputation for mass sales. With good quality and low prices, some domestic manufacturers are gaining momentum.
The overall market for safety sensors declined slightly in 2019, affected by the decline in the growth rate of automobiles in its main downstream industries.
On the whole, the price of safety products is relatively high, the domestic awareness of safety products is not strong enough, and there are still difficulties in industry expansion. Only some industries, such as chemical plants and logistics industries, have an increasing demand for safety products.
RFID: Due to policy support and application changes, a significant increase
RFID products still maintain a high growth in 2019, and data traceability is one of its important application points. At present, intelligent manufacturing and the update of production lines caused by the country's policy orientation on factory big data are its main growth points.
The development trend of RFID in the future is improving, mainly due to the continuous expansion of the application range. In addition to traditional factory automation, process automation such as water treatment industry, business environment such as luxury authenticity recognition has also produced new application scenarios. Future application scenarios have imagination At the same time, some manufacturers will mainly promote RFID in the future.
Vision sensors: domestic manufacturers have grown significantly, and the share of foreign manufacturers has declined slightly
The overall market for vision sensors has developed well in the past two years, with a growth rate of 20%. It is expected that the growth rate will continue in the future, mainly due to the expansion of the application range. The current 3D technology of machine vision can be applied to scenes such as measurement and palletizing, and deep learning is gradually being applied to new scenes such as defect recognition. From the perspective of product classification, industrial cameras have cost advantages in large-scale applications, and the proportion of smart cameras will further increase in the future.
