In an era driven by digitisation and automation, the competitive landscape of the programmable logic controller (PLC) market seems to be more complex than Game of Thrones. 2024, despite the efforts of Chinese PLC vendors to play catch-up, the international giant brands of PLCs, such as Siemens, continue to sit at the top of the market.
On the chessboard of industrial automation, Siemens is like an experienced chess grandmaster, while Chinese PLC manufacturers are novice chess players with dreams. Although they are brave, but in this masters of the duel, the gap between experience and technology so that they can often only play a supporting role. However, it is undeniable that Chinese PLC is quietly rising, and their presence makes the game more exciting.
Analysis of PLC market status
Siemens, a name that is like a legend in the PLC market, is firmly entrenched as the leader with a 40 per cent market share.In 2023, Siemens' revenues reached €77.8 billion, an increase of 11 per cent year-on-year. This figure is not only impressive, but also leaves competitors in the dust.
Meanwhile, Chinese PLC manufacturers are not standing idly by. Through independent R&D and innovation, they have accelerated the iteration in hardware design and software programming to improve the reliability and performance of their products. For example, Nanda Aotuo, Holliday, and China Control Technology have already taken up 900 million to 1 billion yuan in the market size of medium and large PLCs, showing that Chinese PLCs have begun to break the long-standing monopoly of foreign products in specific areas.
Evidence of China's PLC Rise Undeniably, the rise of Chinese PLC has its solid foundation. From technological innovation to brand building, to successful industry application cases, Chinese PLC manufacturers are improving their competitiveness in all aspects. For example, Unionscience Technology has accumulated 15 years of deep experience in the field of smart city and intelligent transport, but also put forward an industry-leading one-stop solution system. Through big data, cloud computing, intelligent identification and other cutting-edge technologies, Unionscience Technology provides a full range of intelligent transport solutions covering tunnels, high-speed roads, urban transport, public travel and other areas of transport participants.
Unionscience Technology's EC400 series PLC is its own research and development of China's own programmable logic controller, this series of products to the modular structure design as the characteristics of a feature-rich, high degree of integration, high performance, high reliability, scalability, easy to use and so on, to the domestic advanced level.
In addition, Chinese PLCs have made remarkable progress in technological innovation. For example, the LK series of large-scale PLCs launched by Hollis has not only been widely used in rail transport, water treatment and other industries, but also demonstrated its powerful performance in key areas such as power stations. With its NA/NJ series PLC products, Aotuo Technology has successfully broken the monopoly of imported controller products and achieved Chinese substitution.
In terms of market share, according to gongkong® market research data, the market size of China's PLC industry will reach 15.89 billion yuan in 2022, of which 7.71 billion yuan will be in the medium- and large-sized PLC market, with a year-on-year growth rate of 32.4%.1 This growth rate is much faster than that of the small-sized PLC market, which indicates that China's medium- and large-sized PLCs have great market potential.
Although Siemens still dominates the market, the rise of Chinese PLCs has become a force to be reckoned with. They are gradually rewriting the future of industrial automation with an unstoppable trend. Perhaps, in the near future, we will see a more diversified and competitive PLC market.
