Rising Demand for Automation to Boost Adoption of Advanced HMI Technologies

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The global human machine interface (HMI) market features a largely fragmented competitive landscape, wherein the top three vendors in 2012, SIEMENS Ag, Rockwell Automation, Mitsubishi Electric, held a collective share of nearly 46% in the global market, observes Transparency Market Research in a recent report. The market comprises a large number of international as well as domestic players operating across key regional markets. Focus on development of market driven products capable of satisfying processing and controlling needs of a wide range of industrial applications and regulations is one of the most popular strategies adopted by market players. 

The global HMI market is expected to tread along a healthy growth path over the period between 2013 and 2019 and rise to a valuation of US$5,579.3 mn by 2019. In terms of product types, the segment of interface software, accounting for the leading share in the global market presently, is expected to retain dominance throughout the forecast period as well. In terms of geography, the market is expected to be dominated by Asia Pacific. 

Rising Demand across Manufacturing and Processing Industries to Stimulate Market 

The rising demand for automation across manufacturing and processing sectors in industries such as mining, packaging, petrochemicals, automotive, pharmaceuticals, and oil and gas is one of the key factors driving the global demand for HMI products. Having demonstrated its competence in minimizing production and labor costs while also helping increase the production outputs, automation has replaced many traditional control processes across these industries in the past few years. As human machine interface solutions provide realistic views of industrial plants, they are being increasingly adopted as an intrinsic part of automation practices.

In addition to this factor, the HMI market is also driven by the positive outlook of several manufacturing and processing industries post the economic slowdown of 2011-2012. Rising output across the manufacturing and processing sectors, especially in developed economies, and the rapid pace of industrialization across Asia Pacific and South America are expected to spur the demand for HMI solutions in the near future. 

High Costs of Installation to Hinder Adoption across Cost-sensitive Markets 

Advanced human machine interface technologies such as gesture recognition, multi-touch screen, voice recognition, and wearable electronics are still extremely expensive and could become a huge financial burden for cash-stripped economies across Asia Pacific and Latin America or industries operating in such areas. Along with the huge installation costs, the widespread adoption of HMI technologies is also hampered owing to lack of skilled operators capable of handling advanced HMI technologies. Training existing employees to cope with the situation can again lead to additional costs, which can strongly discourage the adoption of HMI technologies. 

Along with cost concerns, the adoption of HMI could also be hampered by the risk of employing deficient or malfunctioning systems, which can easily translate in accidents and psychological risk to human resources and vast monetary losses to an organization’s finances. Collectively, these factor are expected to have a significant impact on the development of the global HMI market in the early phase of the forecast period, but the impact is expected to mellow down sizably towards the end of the forecast period. 

This review of the market is based on a recent market research report published by Transparency Research Report, titled “Human Machine Interface Market (HMI) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2013 - 2019.”