Impact of the epidemic on China's industrial sensors

With the development of the concept of industry 4.0 in full swing, the introduction of sensors becomes necessary to implement industry 4.0. Therefore, the industrial market begins to start the demand for sensors. Sensors can meet various application requirements in factory manufacturing environment. It includes predictive maintenance and automation of mechanical production equipment, asset tracking and supply chain, real-time monitoring and calibration, vibration detection and anti tampering, oil and electricity consumption calculation, flow calculation, water level monitoring, etc.

In recent years, industrial sensors have maintained a high growth rate, but the overall market showed a decline in growth in 2019.

Scale and growth rate of industrial sensor market from 2017 to 2022

(data source: mirdatabank)

In the context of the decline in the growth of the overall sensor market, there are still bright spots and opportunities. Among them, for products with low technical threshold such as optoelectronics and proximity switches, under the pressure of economic downturn, some customers put the importance of equipment cost ahead, and there are new opportunities for products of domestic manufacturers and economic products of foreign manufacturers. In RFID, machine vision and other products, with the improvement of the degree of automation, the production line that originally did not need such sensors was upgraded, resulting in the purchase demand; In addition, the development of sensor application scenarios by manufacturers also brings new opportunities to some traditional sensors.

1、 Industrial sensors usher in opportunities in 2020

Opportunity 1: localization impact of photoelectric / proximity switch

In recent years, with the technological development of domestic manufacturers, the strength of domestic sensors can meet the requirements of middle-end customers and seize the share of foreign manufacturers with price advantage. In order to cope with the competition, some foreign-funded manufacturers have launched economic products and achieved certain results.

Opportunity 2. Sensor manufacturers develop new product types

Different from previous manufacturers focusing on the sensors they are good at, in recent years, more and more manufacturers hope to improve their performance with the help of new products. Among them, visual sensors and RFID are the focus of manufacturers. Some manufacturers have launched new products or focused on promoting new products.

Opportunity 3: COVID-19's impact on sensor Market

In the first quarter of 2020, the sensor sales were greatly affected, and the products could not effectively complete the sales orders and shipments.

In 2020, the sensor is limited by the epidemic. The automobile demand in the main downstream industries is delayed rather than disappeared. The electronic industry is benefited by the reform of 5g and mobile phone folding screen. At present, the short-term demand for related products such as ventilator is increasing. With the global spread of the epidemic, medical device manufacturers deserve attention.

2、 Market analysis of main types of sensors

Photoelectric / proximity switch: basically unchanged, domestic manufacturers increased

(data source: mirdatabank)

The overall market of Optoelectronics and proximity switches was basically flat in 2019. Affected by the decline of the automotive industry, the sales performance of Optoelectronics and proximity switches of most German manufacturers and high-end Japanese manufacturers slowed down compared with 2018.

There are two kinds of strategies for foreign-funded companies to gradually develop their products and services: one is to gradually close to the development threshold of switch technology in 2019, and the other is to gradually develop their products and services; The other direction is to develop economical products and sell a large number of products in less demanding markets with their own brand influence and industry reputation. Some domestic manufacturers have a good development momentum with good quality and low price.

Safety sensors: greatly affected by the automobile industry, the industry expands slowly

(data source: mirdatabank)

The overall market of safety sensors declined slightly in 2019, which was affected by the decline in the growth rate of cars in its main downstream industry.

On the whole, the price of safety products is 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, have increased demand for safety products.

RFID: due to changes in policy support and application, the increase is obvious

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 renewal of production lines caused by the national policy guidance on factory big data are its main growth points.

The development trend of RFID will be better in the future, mainly due to the continuous expansion of the scope of application. In addition to traditional factory automation, process automation, such as water treatment industry, business environment, such as luxury authenticity identification, new application scenarios have also been generated. There is room for imagination in the future application scenarios, and some manufacturers will mainly promote RFID in the future.

Visual sensors: domestic manufacturers increased significantly, while the share of foreign manufacturers decreased slightly

The overall market of visual 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 scope of application. The current 3D technology of machine vision can be applied to measurement, palletizing and other scenes, and deep learning is gradually applied to new scenes such as defect recognition. From the perspective of product classification, industrial cameras have cost advantages in large-scale application, and the proportion will be further improved compared with smart cameras in the future.