IMS Research predicts that Asia Pacific will overtake the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region in 2014 to become the largest market for distributed control systems (DCS). Revenues from the regional market will reach around $7.3 billion in 2015, 37 percent of the global total.
Until 2009, Asia Pacific was still the smallest regional DCS market. However, it has grown quickly in the last few years, particularly in China and India, reports IMS Research. Although DCS revenues in EMEA and the Americas fell in the 2009 recession, the market in Asia Pacific still managed to continue to grow, despite a decline in Japan. In this market, much of the revenues from Asia can be attributed to DCS hardware bought for greenfield projects, as China and India are addressing the energy and infrastructure needs of a growing population with more disposable income, and of continued urbanization, according to IMS Research.
IMS Research Market Analyst Kiran Patel explains this trend. “Governments have been addressing the needs of the population with investment in various large-scale projects designed to provide more power and energy,” Patel said in a prepared statement. “This will be reflected in the above-average growth in DCS product revenues in the petrochemical, oil & gas, and power industries of the region.”
“Plans in Asia Pacific to expand or install nuclear power capacity were much less affected than those of other parts of the world by 2011’s Fukushima disaster in Japan,” Patel continued. “With higher disposable incomes, the demand for processed food and drink is projected to increase; thus sales of DCS for food and beverage processing equipment are also projected to grow at an above-average rate. The investment in China is centered on its 12th Five Year Plan, which addresses the growing need to shift China’s dependency on export to the development of an internal market. In 2013, revenues in China from DCS products are projected to be higher than those in Japan.”
