Encoder market

Encoders have a high proportion of applications in the OEM market, mainly used in machine tools, elevators, servo motor accessories, textile machinery, packaging machinery, printing machinery, lifting machinery and other industries. In 2010, the rapid growth of China's OEM market drove the rapid growth of the encoder market. In 2010, the market size of the Chinese encoder market reached 1.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42.9%.

From the industry point of view, elevators, machine tools and servo motors are the key application areas of encoders, accounting for 53% of the overall application market. Textile machinery, packaging machinery and printing machinery and other fields currently have a small market share. Encoders generally do not directly enter these three industries. The competition of encoder manufacturers mainly focuses on the motor production plants that provide servo motors for these machinery industries. The current market share of lifting machinery is also small, accounting for only 4%-5%. In project-oriented industries such as the metallurgical and electronics industries, encoders currently have a lower proportion of applications, accounting for only 14% of the market. In addition, encoders have certain applications in medical machinery, wind power, automobile production lines, hybrid vehicles, water conservancy, rail transit, etc., but the application ratio is low.

In 2010, the demand for automation products in the wind power industry has increased by more than 50%, and the main application fields of elevators, servo motors, textile machinery and machine tools have also grown significantly, which is the main source of growth.

From the perspective of manufacturers, the current European and American brands occupy the high-end market, accounting for more than one-third of the market share, product prices are high-end, and have advantages in new energy fields such as heavy industry and wind power; Japanese and Korean brands mainly occupy the mid-end market, accounting for three More than one market share, product price positioning in the middle, in elevators, machine tools, servo motors and other industries are widely used; while mainland companies mainly participate in the competition in the low-end market, the product price is lower, to account for nearly half of the market The volume only gets 25% of the mainland market share.

Companies with high market share include Heidenhain, Tamagawa, Nemicon, Yuheng, Baumer, Rep, P+F, Danaher, Koyo, Omron, etc. The market share of the top three companies accounts for nearly 50% of the total market, and the market concentration is high. The application industries that are mainly targeted by enterprises are highly concentrated and the industry is less competitive. The growth rate of mainstream manufacturers also has a significant gap, with the largest increase of 60% and the smallest increase of less than 10%.

The encoder is divided into absolute value type and incremental type. At present, the price of absolute encoders is about 4 times that of incremental encoders. 70% of the applications in the domestic market are incremental encoders with relatively economical price, mainly used in industries such as packaging, textiles, elevators, etc. It is required to measure the speed and the equipment that is not required for absolute position measurement. In high-precision mechanical equipment or heavy industry such as steel, port and lifting, due to the relatively high precision of measurement, more absolute encoders are used. In these heavy industry applications, due to the harsh working conditions, the requirements for the impact resistance and vibration of the encoder are high.

With the improvement of automation of mechanical equipment, the application fields of encoder products are more and more extensive, and customers are no longer satisfied that the encoder can only convert physical rotating signals into electrical signals, and requires higher integration of encoders. The product is more durable and it is expected to have a richer interface in the Absolute Encoder to make more devices intelligent.

At present, production safety and communication security in the entire industrial market are getting more and more attention. At the national level, the requirements for product safety performance are also put forward. Encoders also have corresponding specifications for safety standards, but the domestic encoder market has relatively strict technical requirements for products. Low, customers prefer middle and low-end products.