By Sujan Sami, Program Manager
There are growing needs for end users in the analytical instrumentation market including quicker sales, faster time-to-analysis, low-cost products, and increase in efficiency. The major end-user segments include:
- Pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and life sciences
- Government and academic research institutions and laboratories
- Environmental safety and agricultural research testing laboratories
- Chemicals and petrochemicals
- Food and beverage
- Oil and gas
- Water and wastewater
- Metals and mining
Others (including end users such as defense, homeland security, power generation, iron and steel, pulp and paper, electronics, and semiconductors)
Apart from aftersales services such as instrument service, laboratory operation, strategy service, and application consulting service, today’s environment forays into third-party services such as laboratory asset management, RFID inventory control service, laboratory intelligence, consulting services, and compliance services. The service arena has become one of the key differentiating factors for vendors to stand out of the competition.
Competitor Differentiation
Despite product features and functionalities being key driving factors for differentiation in the market, today’s competitive world demands that vendors portray their advantage in the form of software and service options. Value-added services are the need of the hour where partnerships between vendors and niche service providers are on the rise. Being a ‘one-shop-stop’ solution provider in the mature analytical instrumentation market will increase the chances of a vendor staying ahead of the competition.
For example, in the petrochemical market, services for discovery and quality control with the help of scanning electron microscopes and electron microscope analyzers to extract hydrocarbons are upcoming trends. Predictive maintenance through Services 2.0 is another upcoming trend boosting market growth. Private third-party service providers that are not OEMs are expected to create healthy competition in the analytical arena where end users will benefit with a holistic solution of hardware, software, aftersales services and Services 2.0.
End-user Perspective
There are different needs for each end-user industry, which accordingly require customized and cost-effective products. Apart from this, there are also safety concerns in industries such as oil and gas and chemicals where technicians must deal with hazardous products. In view of this, there needs to be a synchronization between vendors and end users to ensure sophisticated features, safety, and cost effectiveness. In this regard, we are also working on a new study on end-user perspectives that is survey based with inputs from several users of the various analytical instrumentation products. In addition, a new topic covering Services 2.0 is in the works covering third-party services mentioned above.
Frost & Sullivan’s analytical instrumentation program focusses on key product deliverables including chromatography, spectroscopy, gas analyzers, liquid analyzers, material testing, surface science techniques, life science systems, mass spectrometry, x-ray instrumentation and informatics among others. Frost & Sullivan has also published several research services including Emerging Opportunities in Global Analytical Instrumentation Services and Support Market, Outlook of the Global Analytical Instrumentation Industry, Analysis of the Global Mass Spectrometry Market, Global Analysis of the Oil and Gas Analytical Instrumentation Market, Analytical Instrumentation Market for Food Testing, Global Laboratory Analytical Instrumentation Market, Analysis of the Global Analytical X-ray Instrumentation Market, Global Process Analytical Instrumentation Market and Global Water Analysis Instrumentation Market among others.
For any queries related to the article or to purchase a copy of the study, kindly contact the author Sujan Sami at ssami@frost.com.
