Like every year at the same time, the Simtec (the French trade association for electronic instrumentation) has published figures for the electronic instrumentation market in France. With 48 members and sales of around €311 million in test and measurement in 2011, this trade association has a good overview of the market, even if some major players (Tektronix, Fluke, Teradyneare not included.
Simtec members increased their sales volume by 7.6 % to 311.5 M€ in 2011, consolidating the 7.2 % growth recorded in 2010. Services (calibration, maintenance) accounted for around a third of this figure (€104.7 million).
The breakdown by market sector is broadly stable compared with the previous year, with the Defense/aerospace (30 %) and telecoms (22 %) markets dominating, far ahead of other industries (13 %), education (9 %) and automotive (8 %).
While the market is growing overall, there are major disparities between instrument categories. Test equipment and modular (board-based) instruments saw spectacular growth (36 % and 29.2 %, respectively). This was also the case for power instrumentation (+28.9 %) and radiocom testers (+20 %). On the other hand, other instrument categories are down, notably RF signal generators (-4 %), RF analyzers (-2 %) and wireline test equipment (-2 %). Simtec does not publish figures for oscilloscopes (the basic instrument of electronic instrumentation) and general instrumentation (multimeters, in particular), as there are no major players in this field, and member players do not wish to give information to the competition (members give their figures, but anonymously and confidentially).
Learn more: www.simtec.org/