Global sales of industrial operator terminals, which were worth almost $2bn last year, will plunge by $300m in 2009, according to a new forecast from the market researcher IMS Research. It believes that the economic downturn will have “a huge and prolonged impact” on operator terminal revenues.

Although growth in the world market is expected to restart in 2011, revenues in 2013 will not be much higher than they were in 2008.
 
IMS analyst Daniel Welch predicts that expenditure on operator terminals by machine-builders and users will decline sharply this year, with revenues from the automotive sector – the largest user of operator terminals – suffering a slump of more than 20% compared to 2008. 
 
♦  Another IMS report – on the global machine vision market – paints a rosier picture, with sales recovering in the second quarter of 2009 after “a very difficult six months”.  Revenues in the American and European markets levelled out during the second quarter, while those in Asia grew by 10%. But, IMS warns, the recovery is “likely to be steady, rather than meteoric”.