Do you already notice that Asian machine vision companies are pushing into the European market?
Williamson: We are starting to see these companies at trade fairs at the low end of the market mainly promoting price as the key differentiator. The largest market for industrial machine vision, Germany, is generally cautious and until there is a clear track record of quality and service the take up will be slow. Price driven products are not new and as the low end becomes a commodity we will see more of this trend. I believe that knowledge is still the most important enabler to successful machine vision solutions and until absolute confidence is created in products from asian manufacturers, there will be no explosive growth for these companies. Now is the time for European manufacturers to look at their business models and prepare to compete. According to Darwin´s law, only the strongest will survive, and this is also true for this phase in the machine vision market evolution.
What do you consider the most important machine vision events in Europe besides Vision fair?
Williamson: Vision Stuttgart remains really the only major exhibition event for the industry at a European level. The EMVA and VDMA machine vision conferences are also great opportunities to understand trends and network with industry experts. Each event is different and unique and I would recommend attending. Apart from that, the Stemmer Imaging machine vision technology forum has also established itself as a premium event on the European level. It always takes place on opposite years to Vision, is packed with over 40 seminars and repeated in five countries.
To what extent does the Brexit influence the British machine vision market?
Williamson: The biggest effect to date was the run-up to the June 2016 vote for Brexit. Many projects were put on hold and we saw a 20% reduction in business running up to June 2016. Since then with the shift in exchange rate we have seen many of the UK customers who export growing at a high rate. This coupled with good GDP growth, companies are now giving projects the go ahead, hence business outlook is looking strong. Uncertainty remains a key risk. How the Brexit negotiations progress could change the market at any time in the next two years and there is no way to really know the long term effect. For now there is a feeling of business as usual.
| Serie VDMA IBV Expertenrunden
Teil 1: OPC UA (INV 4/16) Teil 2: VDI/VDE/VDMA 2632 (INV 5/16) Teil 3: Software (INV 6/16) Teil 4: Embedded Vision (INV 1/17) Teil 5: Industrie 4.0 (INV 2/17) |
