Market for SMT equipment in continued upward trend

The manufacturers of SMT equipment and placement solutions increased the value of their worldwide deliveries in the first three months of 2011 by another seven percent over the already highly successful last quarter of 2010. The outlook continues to be positive, say the market researchers at Siplace, because new order bookings set a new record in the first quarter of 2011. The order bookings for SMT production equipment in March alone increased by 53% over February, which was already a strong month. While the overall picture is positive, there are differences between regional markets. Europe, North America and South America continued their steady rise after making it through the crisis and established themselves as the growth drivers in early 2011 with 66% more order bookings compared with the first quarter of 2010. In China, which emerged from the crisis sooner, the market calmed down, albeit at a high level. While shipments rose by 11%, new order bookings for the first quarter of 2011 were almost 10% below the strong first quarter of 2010. “The overall picture continues to be very positive, as indicated by the development of order bookings in the first quarter. As a premium supplier, ASM Assembly Systems with its Siplace brand benefits disproportionately from this trend and continues to increase its market share, partly because the boom in China and Asia in general is moving towards more advanced and flexible placement solutions like our Siplace SX line. The low-end segment, on the other hand, continues to decline in importance. While the installed bases are not yet comparable, the structure of the machine portfolios in China keeps edging closer to those in Europe and North America as far as new investments are concerned. If this trend continues, Siplace will keep benefiting as the industry’s technology leader,” says Stephanie Pepersack, who is in charge of market intelligence at Siplace, about the latest market studies.