Camera sales are booming

A year or so ago “experts” were cautiously predicting slow growth for the machine vision industry. You may however recall that I went out on a limb and said that business was improving much more quickly than the official statistics indicated. Well if lasts weeks record results from Cognex (“Cognex publish full year 2010 results “) didn’t prompt you to send me a congratulatory email perhaps the news out of Stadtroda will.

Stadtroda, Germany is home to Allied Vision Technologies, (AVT for short) and they are loudly trumpeting their 2010 financial results. You can go to the press release for all the details, but let me give you the headlines:

• Overall revenue up 58% over 2009.
• Sales of GigE cameras doubled, while FireWire was up 30%.
  

Comments and conclusions?

• It’s not clear from the press release if sales from VDS-Vosskühler (acquired in January ’11) are being included – I assume not but I’m not familiar with German accounting standards.
• Gigabit ethernet cameras are rapidly coming of age and clearly AVT were very smart in acquiring Prosilica when they did.
  

What’s next, another acquisition? If so, will AVT stick to what they know – cameras – or will they be tempted by a foray into machine vision software?

Only time will tell.