Once again in December 2009 CONTROL magazine published its
list of TOP-50 Automation & Control suppliers - with separate rankings for
global and N. America.
Since these are all public companies, the data is about a year old - for their
fiscal years 2008. There seems to be no real solution to this "old data"
problem. 2009 will tell a different story.
At $87.7B the top-50 grew about 16% in 2008, compared with 17% in 2007. Growth
for North America was 4.6% to $22.9B compared with 5% in 2007.
Globally, there was no significant change among the leaders and the top 6 are
now: Siemens, ABB, Emerson, Rockwell, Schneider and Honeywell.
There was no change in the top-3 suppliers in the N. American market. Once
again, Emerson was #1 on the list with revenues of $3.4B, up 9.6%, and extending
market share slightly from 14% to 15%. In second place, Rockwell grew at nearly
11% to $2.9B with market share at 12.5%. In third place was ABB, with revenue of
about $2B and minimal growth (3%), with 8.5% market-share. Clearly ABB has
shifted to global focus.
In fourth place for N. America was global leader Siemens, with about 3.5% growth
to $1.4B. If Siemens wants to grow they'll need to make an acquisition. Can't be
Rockwell (anti-trust blockage) but perhaps Honeywell (which slipped to No. 6
(behind Danaher), or Invensys which fell out of the top-10 (now #14) with 10%
Lower revenues, behind Endress & Hauser which grew 8.5% to $1.8B.
GE and Fanuc had not broken up yet in 2008, but they were ranked separately,
Fanuc is No. 11 and GE No. 12, both at about $1.8B.
Globally, Siemens is still 1.5 times bigger than its nearest rival, ABB, which
in turn is more than twice as big as any of the next - Mitsubishi, Emerson and
Schneider, all about equal. Japanese Yokogawa is apparently faltering.
The only strategy which would enable the top few to get higher on the rankings
is through merger or acquisition. 2010 will be the year of fallout.
