HMI hardware market grows fastest in Asia Pacific

Staff -- Control Engineering, 5/1/2006

Wellingborough, U.K.—HMI hardware market is growing fastest in the Asia Pacific area, a recent IMS Research study indicates. World market for operator interfaces is expected to increase to more than $1.9 billion by 2009, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.4%, says the report. The strong increase is attributed to significant growth in China and India, coupled with slower growth in Germany. In previous HMI hardware studies, the EMEA (Europe, Middle-East, and Africa) market had been the fastest growing.

Among the product groups analyzed, open HMI hardware topped the growth list with a CAGR of 27.8%. Although the market for this type of product is currently small, says the report, it is expected to increase to the third largest product group by 2009, exceeded in size by only graphic and touch-screen operator panels.

Tim Dawson, IMS research senior analyst and report author, says open HMIs let users "configure the product to a particular application by accessing the operating system and scaling it to meet their needs. The products are designed to fill the gap between traditional HMI products and full-blown industrial PCs, typically offering increased functionality and flexibility over traditional HMIs at a lower cost than industrial PCs," he added.

The study says that open HMI growth is fueled by greater user awareness, replacements of traditional HMIs with embedded operating systems and lower-level industrial PCs, and new applications.