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3D Printing Industry To Triple In Four Years To $21 Billion (computerworld.com)
Year-over-year the 3D printing industry has grown by as much as 30%. Now, it's set to triple in revenue over the next four years, according to a new report. For comparison, this year the industry will reach nearly $7.3 billion, and by 2020, it is expected to reach nearly $21 billion. Published by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and the United Parcel Service (UPS), the study, called "3D Printing: The Next Revolution in Industrial Manufacturing," revealed that the two biggest industries representing a combined 40% of the growth are consumer electronics and automotive. Medical devices will represent about 15% of the growth. North America and Europe will account for more than 68% of the 3D printing market revenue, while the Asia Pacific market will account for about 27% of sales. Here's an impressive stat: 3D printing represents only 0.04% of the global manufacturing market right now. However, if 3D printing captures 5% of global manufacturing capacity, which researcher firm Wohlers Associates believes it will, the industry would be worth a staggering $640 billion. "This is a market ripe for disruption," the report said. "Technology adopters that move beyond prototyping to use 3D printing in supporting and streamlining production can achieve new manufacturing efficiencies. Plus, there is an enormous opportunity for companies that get it right."
For comparison, this year the industry will reach nearly $7.3 billion, and by 2020, it is expected to reach nearly $21 billion.
That sounds like a lot (and it is) but compared to the overall manufacturing market it's virtually a rounding error. The US manufacturing sector alone is something close to $2 Trillion and the US accounts for something like 17% of global manufacturing. (China is somewhere around $3 Trillion currently and Japan is around $800 Billion) For reference $7.3 billion is just a bit smaller than the total revenue of eBay. Impressive but hardly world shaking.
Here's an impressive stat: 3D printing represents only 0.04% of the global manufacturing market right now. However, if 3D printing captures 5% of global manufacturing capacity, which researcher firm Wohlers Associates believes it will, the industry would be worth a staggering $640 billion.
That's a common argument made to justify silly valuations of new companies and technologies. "If we capture just 1% of this huge market..." while conveniently ignoring how difficult actually doing that will be. Capturing just a few percent doesn't sound like a lot but actually it really is a monumental task. 3D printing has tremendous potential and I expect it to really be a huge deal in the coming years but it's going to be a while before it captures even 1% of global manufacturing, much less 5%.
A lot of manufacturing is not aided at all by 3D printing. For example my company makes wire harnesses. 3D printing is useful in our industry for some fixtures, prototypes and the odd bit of tooling but it's a wildly inefficient way to make a wire harness or any sizeable quantity of the parts that go into one. There are other technologies that are far more cost effective for volume production. That's not to say 3D printing isn't super helpful but it's not even close to replacing even a fraction of a percent of what we do. Same is true for plenty of other manufacturing technologies. 3D printing is great for low volume production and while I expect it to speed up, there are other ways to make things that often are much more economical and/or effective which 3D printing will struggle to displace.