Understanding the State of Machine Vision
MVPro Media – The Vision Podcast #28
Guest – Jonathan Sparkes, Market Intelligence Analyst | Interact Analysis
Jonathan Sparkes, Market Intelligence Analyst at Interact Analysis, joins Josh Eastburn to explore the forces shaping today’s machine vision market, from post-pandemic recovery and AI adoption to emerging applications and changing global competition.
In this episode, Jonathan explains how Interact Analysis researches the machine vision industry, discusses why the market has recovered more strongly than expected, and examines the technologies and sectors driving future growth. The conversation covers AI-enabled vision systems, logistics, semiconductors, defense, Chinese market expansion, synthetic data, event-based imaging, and the trends that manufacturers, technology suppliers, and system integrators should be watching over the coming years.
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- Podcast player
- Guest information
- Useful links
- Episode chapters
- Episode transcript
Listen to the Episode
About our Guest
Jonathan Sparkes is a Market Intelligence Analyst at Interact Analysis, specialising in the global machine vision market. He leads the company’s annual machine vision research, providing data-driven insights into market trends, technology adoption, industry applications, and regional growth. Working closely with manufacturers, system integrators, distributors, and end users, Jonathan helps businesses understand the commercial forces shaping the future of industrial automation.
Useful Links:
Jonathan Sparkes on Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-sparkes
Interact Analysis: https://interactanalysis.com/
Interact Analysis on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/interact-analysis/
Machine Vision Research Report: interactanalysis.com/interact-analysis-machine-vision-research/
Episode Chapters
Click onto the chapters to access the relevant sections of the transcript below.
1. From Market Research to Machine Vision
Jonathan explains how his background in mathematics and market analysis led him to specialise in machine vision, and how Interact Analysis builds its research through direct conversations with companies across the industry’s value chain.
2. Understanding the Machine Vision Market
The discussion explores the market slowdown following the post-pandemic inventory correction, the impact of supply chain disruptions and tariffs, and why the industry recovered more quickly than many expected.
3. Where Machine Vision Is Growing Fastest
Jonathan examines the industries driving demand today, from logistics and semiconductors to defense, while explaining how lower-cost technology and changing global competition are expanding machine vision into new markets.
4. AI Beyond Inspection
Rather than focusing solely on pass or fail decisions, AI is increasingly helping manufacturers understand inspection data, optimise processes, and unlock new value through analytics and easier deployment.
5. The Next Generation of Machine Vision
Start: “Yes. I mean, within the written report…”
Looking ahead, Jonathan discusses emerging technologies including 3D imaging, event-based vision, hyperspectral cameras, synthetic image generation, and faster interfaces, before sharing where he believes the industry’s biggest opportunities lie over the next five years.
“Machine vision has become much more accessible. The pricing pressure and the competition are helping bring costs down and opening the technology to entirely new industries.”
Episode Transcript
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
When you’re using vision and you’re taking an image and you have a pass or fail, or you determine how many items can be picked using a robotic arm and things like that, customers are really trying to understand the analytics of that. How many passes are they getting? When do they not get a pass? What’s driving that? And that’s something that AI is solving and over time is going to create even greater growth.
Josh Eastburn – host
Welcome to the MVPro Podcast. My guest today is Jonathan Sparkes, Market Intelligence Analyst at Interact Analysis, the official market research partner of the Association for Advancing Automation. Interact gives companies access to high-quality market intelligence, providing data and insight that help businesses make smarter, faster, and more confident decisions. Their highly experienced analysts bring decades of collective experience in technology research and work closely with some of the world’s largest and most respected companies. With offices across the UK, the US, and Asia, they support clients globally while remaining agile, personal, and deeply collaborative. Jonathan gained his analysis and modeling skills from his background in mathematics and covers the industrial automation sector with a focus on machine vision and the AMR and AGV markets. In this interview, we discuss recent shifts in the vision market and what’s coming next. I interviewed Jonathan in June, so we referenced the 2026 Automate Show. But don’t be fooled, it’s not happening next week. If you weren’t there yourself, you can find the highlights at mvpromedia.com. Let’s get into it. So the first time that I had heard of Interact Analysis, this was Ed Goffin from Pleora who had dropped the idea of talking with you. And I’m not sure what his connection is. I didn’t actually think to ask how he knew about it, but you know, the A3 is pretty big out here in North America. There’s a very big event that’s going on. Yeah, next week. And so that’s quite influential in the industrial automation space in general. And how did that connection come together between A3 and Interact Analysis? Are you at all familiar with that?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Absolutely. Yeah. So we are the official market intelligence partners for the A3. So actually we’ve worked with them for quite a long time. We analyze their sentiment survey as well. So we do that for the A3. And actually the A3 approached us as a company to do the research for the machine vision study. Recognizing really that as an independent, you know, market intelligence company, we could interview and speak with the entire market, provide some really granular data in that space. So yeah, so we know them very well.
Josh Eastburn – host
Oh, okay, great. Well, definitely want to dig into that because of course I’m interested in what Interact Analysis does in general and specifically around the machine vision industry. But I wanted to start by talking about your background a little bit. I’ve worked with a lot of different analyst firms in my career and I always wonder you know, what pulls someone to work in market research? How did you particularly end up working with a focus on machine vision?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yeah.
Josh Eastburn – host
So yeah, anything you can speak to there would be fun to know.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
So my actual career path mainly was in retail, very different to what I do now. Yeah. But I had a degree in maths, and I just kind of fell into the retail sector and worked a lot of time there. But I decided I wanted to change. And when I applied for the role I do now, it sounded very interesting. I understood that I’d be able to use my maths degree in the sort of analysis side of things. But I’ve also always found it quite easy to talk to, you know, different areas of the supply chain or the value chain or the executive level. So how our research is conducted, it’s really quite good for me. I enjoy the fact that I can potentially be talking with the CEO of a company one day and the next day talking to a product manager, next day talking to someone in sales. So it’s very different day to day. And it’s interesting. And I think from the machine vision perspective, I wouldn’t say I got to choose that as a topic, I guess. But ever since I’ve done it, as a company, it was the first time that we did the research for machine machine vision, and I was the analyst to do that. So it’s kind of my baby and my report focus within the company. So I’ve always enjoyed it since doing it, met some really great people and obviously learned a lot about the industry over the last three years as well.
Josh Eastburn – host
Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. So the last three years, that’s kind of been when you’ve been focusing on machine vision.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yeah.
Josh Eastburn – host
Gotcha. Okay. So you’ve spent the last three years looking at machine vision, the industry from different perspectives. I like to ask people though about what it is about machine vision that sort of catches their interest just on a personal level. Have you come across an application or a technology or research within the industry that most excites you?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yeah, so I think when I started the research three years ago, like the sentiment towards AI and AI-enabled software was, you know, that it was just a buzzword. It wasn’t necessarily there yet. Customers were perhaps asking, but they didn’t really know what they needed. But I think, you know, seeing the transition over the last 3 years and the continued, I suppose, enhancements and companies entering that market, I just find it very interesting and dynamic. There’s a lot of companies that perhaps were never offering a software, you know, offering. Now they’re realizing they have to have their cameras AI enabled. So yeah, I think that’s one of the most dynamic and highest growing areas of the machine vision market.
Josh Eastburn – host
Absolutely. Okay. So let’s get into the research here a little bit. For listeners who are new to what Interact Analysis does, how would you describe what market intelligence analysis is and what does that involve day to day, especially in a very technical sector like machine vision?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
So as a company, we focus heavily on primary research. So really talking to the vendors in the market, but that’s not just at the manufacturer stage and not the manufacturers of machine vision goods, but across the entire value chain. So really trying to understand what distributors are seeing, what integrators are seeing, machine builders are seeing, also end customers. So my day-to-day job changes probably day on day, but what we’re really trying to do is start the research efforts and interview and speak with as much of the market as possible. So you mentioned the Automate Show. I’ll be there next week. And meeting with some of our current clients of our research, but then also prospective clients and obviously trying to continuously, I suppose, increase our contact log and who I’m speaking to and gather insights from the market. But then within that, we create a market size and market forecast for the machine vision market. And then a detailed report that goes through, you know, the key insights and the opportunities, the industries that are driving growth, applications driving growth. So it’s a very detailed and comprehensive research effort. I spend around six months of the year like fully focused on it.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
And then the other 6 months tracking product announcements, financials, and still having market discussions. And obviously also having sales calls, trying to sell our research, which in itself obviously offers up conversations from prospective customers around what’s going on in the market.
Josh Eastburn – host
Wow, okay. So would you say that that approach is unique to Interact Analysis? Is that pretty typical for how a firm like yours operates? What’s the secret sauce that you provide?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yeah, I don’t think it’s necessarily typical of a lot of research institutes. They often are using sort of secondary data collection. They’re using desk research to build up market sizes. Whereas our approach obviously is really trying to talk to as many people in the market and especially at, you know, the largest companies to understand what they’re seeing, you know, how are they performing, what is driving that growth. We also as well have a lot of dedicated studies in adjacent markets, which obviously also support understanding the potential. So we have a dedicated study into manufacturing output. So that obviously gives an idea of what regions are growing in terms of manufacturing output and how vision is obviously potentially supporting that opportunity. We also track things like warehouse construction, factory construction to understand, you know, new sites coming online, what’s the chances they’re deploying vision. And then also markets such as industrial robots, mobile robots, robotic picking. So we’re really looking at the entire product solution and the solution more generally, but then also the components that are supplied to that. So machine vision being a component supplied to a lot of these end markets.
Josh Eastburn – host
And you mentioned a couple of the questions that your clients are typically trying to answer, right, about their own companies and what the influences are that are affecting their business. Maybe you could speak a little bit more to that. Typically, what types of companies are coming to you? What kinds of questions are they trying to answer?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
In terms of the companies that come to us, that is wide-ranging. So I suppose for each report, and for the machine vision report, you know, the main customer is the manufacturers themselves of the goods. However, you will also find that we have consulting firms that will want to use our research, or potentially they’re supporting with mergers, acquisitions, funding for companies in the space or companies looking to enter the space. We also sell to integrators, machine builders, distributors even as well. So they’re obviously really trying to understand what are the market trends? Where’s the market going? What products are driving growth? What industries? You know, what are the nuances potentially in different regions? Are they servicing enough of the addressable market that they’re looking to address? And then we also sell it a lot to robotics companies, etc., that would be deploying vision potentially as vision-guided robotics or in mobile robots, for example, wanting to understand the trends within machine vision that could potentially support their market as well.
Josh Eastburn – host
Okay, interesting. So that’s actually, yeah, pretty broad swath of the industry, right? Lots of different subsectors are interested in understanding how the market is performing. Let’s talk about the market then. When you think of who’s leading the market right now, who are some of the top companies that come to mind, maybe in some of those different subsectors that you mentioned?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
I think overall for the general machine vision market, it’s your Keyence and your Cognex. You know, they continue to be the major players, the powerhouses really in the machine vision space. And whilst they continue to grow and perform well, I think it’s really worth calling out some of the Chinese vendors that are now moving especially into Europe, but also the Americas market and looking at the opportunities they can have there where they’re selling at a much lower price. They’re able to attract customers that perhaps want that lower cost solution or are very cost sensitive. So companies such as Hikrobot that are definitely really targeting the European market are growing faster than the market and growing faster than some of those companies above them, which is obviously great for them, but it is probably changing business models and decisions for some of the, you know, incumbent vendors in the European market and the Americas market where they’re having to now compete on price or find other ways to compete on those projects.
Josh Eastburn – host
Sure. I just interviewed someone from Vico Imaging representing COOLENS just last month talking about the Asian market and how it’s interacting with Europe now and the speed at which they’re able to move in Asia. And the kinds of advantages that gives them. So that seems like not a coincidence that you should mention that also.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yeah.
Josh Eastburn – host
Obviously there are fluctuations, right, in the global market. There was a tough stretch in 2023 and 2024. Based on your research, what was behind that period, that struggle?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yeah, so I think there was basically an overstocking event really that happened in sort of 2021, late 2021 and 2022. And you know, a lot of customers, machine builders, integrators, really overstocked. They had surplus, which just meant that there was this increase in revenue and opportunity in 2022 that then translated into a decline for 2023. So that was where a lot of that came from. And then ultimately that overstocking kind of lasted longer than many people expected. So there still continued to be this, I suppose, this continuation into the sort of first quarter, the first half of 2024, which didn’t help market conditions as well. But then also it was just a challenging time really for some of the large end industries. So Automotive is kind of struggling really. It’s really challenging at the moment, and that’s globally. It’s not just specific to any particular region. And then also industries such as semiconductors just had a bit of a downturn in 2023. So it’s kind of now we’re seeing much stronger growth from semiconductors, not so much from automotive still, but yeah, there’s the promising shoots of some of these large industries really performing well again at the moment, and not the backdrop of overstock within machine builders.
Josh Eastburn – host
That initial overstocking event in 2023, was that— the timing just seems interesting. Is that something, some kind of holdover from COVID What was driving that from what you understand?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
So it’s more from like the chip shortage. So there’d been a, you know, a lack of components for the cameras and the systems more broadly. Yeah, there was a lot of companies in the market described it as huge orders. Obviously then that was, they managed to service those orders, but then it was the backlog meant that end customers, machine builders were not then purchasing as much. And because of that big spike up, it obviously kind of automatically driven a bit of a decline for 2023. But yeah, then that just persisted a bit longer than I think the vendors in the market expected. You know, analysts expected it was just weaker conditions along with still that overstocking.
Josh Eastburn – host
Mm-hmm. And of course, where I’m going with this is trying to tee up, you know, where we are today in 2026 and how some of these events led to what we saw in 2025. And it sounds like according to your research, after that initial decline in ’23-’24, the market has been bouncing back and maybe faster than predicted. Does that sound right?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yeah.
Josh Eastburn – host
Tell us about some of those growth forecasts. What was changing in that period?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
I think as well, there was a lot of uncertainty at the beginning of 2025 with the tariff situation and no one really knowing how that was going to come out really. So a lot of companies just described huge uncertainty. So both internal uncertainty for themselves, but also for end customers, no one really knowing what was going to happen, how high the tariffs would be. So when we published our research towards the beginning of 2025, we actually forecast a slight decline for 2025 based really on this and the fact of the uncertainty. But then how we conduct our research, as I have said, we are always interviewing the market, always talking to the market, but we also publish a mid-year updates of our forecast for some of our customers. So when I was producing that around October last year, it was quite clear that companies had performed better. There hadn’t been this, I suppose, slowdown for projects driven by the tariff situation. And obviously then there was also a bit more certainty around what that tariff was going to be or the impact of that to pricing and distribution, etc. And then in conducting the full research once more for in early 2026, it was quite clear that actually some regions had performed much stronger.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
So the APAC region continues to be a huge driver of growth for the machine vision market. It’s the largest market and then also the strongest growing really. And it just continues to be resilient. And, you know, Chinese vendors especially are finding ways to branch out to service more of the rest of Asia, some of the surrounding countries, but then also able to sell at a higher price into the European market, albeit still lower than a lot of the European vendors are currently able to sell at. So it’s great for them. And obviously as well, they can also provide these goods very quickly. They can manufacture them very fast. They have the economy of scale to kind of drive their own growth as well.
Josh Eastburn – host
Okay. So it’s a combination of a lower impact from tariffs than expected and also some new market or foreign market growth. Is that, did I get that all? Did I understand that correctly?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yeah. I mean, there is some strength really in the industries as well. So semiconductors continue to be strong now. That’s a large end industry for machine vision. Also seeing additional spending really in aerospace and defense. Still a market, especially in defense, that perhaps is under a lot more regulations and compliance, but it’s actually getting easier. The barriers to entry there are getting easier. So it’s just supporting further growth for machine vision technologies, especially in manufacturing and in defense as well.
Josh Eastburn – host
Okay. That’s actually a perfect segue because I wanted to talk about that industry breakdown as well. There are certainly, you know, some key areas that we think of when we talk about machine vision, things like, you know, quality control within manufacturing, I think generally comes to mind for people, represents a lot of applications at a very broad level. You’ve also mentioned semiconductor and defense a couple of times. Yeah. Which are the industries that are, or maybe specific types of applications that are really leading the market right now?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
I think within defense, we kind of look at it in two ways. So we look at it as the manufacturing of the goods themselves. So whether that’s manufacturing of a drone, or anything really that’s within a defense application. But then we also look at it from the non-manufacturing side around the guidance or the things being used in surveillance, things like that, that are also now high growth areas for machine vision that, you know, perhaps weren’t a few years ago. You know, obviously there’s been a few conflicts recently. There’s still things going on in Europe with Russia and Ukraine. And I think, you know, governments across the globe are just committing more and more funding, more and more capital, CapEx, into that industry that it’s just supporting vision growth and not necessarily even new applications, but just applications that are using higher-end cameras, higher-end equipment within machine vision that is just supporting that additional growth. And then the largest growth industry that we see globally, or generally, is logistics. So another sort of non-manufacturing industry where there’s a lot of applications really around traceability, things like that. There’s also applications really just for, you know, you get kind of more basic code reading, dimensioning, etc.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
But there’s also Vision being deployed a lot more with things like what we class as bin picking. So, you know, the picking and placing of items as they’re passing through logistics setting. And all of these are really, I suppose, just supporting that stronger growth opportunity, especially in industries that were perhaps not the largest a few years ago, but that are growing much faster than some of the larger industries.
Josh Eastburn – host
Fascinating. I think comments from previous guests, when we talk about the market outlook, when we talk about what’s driving their business, definitely resonate with what you’ve said. We’ve had multiple guests talking about changes in the defense industry and a demand for more vision technologies there. Obviously, it makes sense what you’re saying about that being driven by global conflict. It’s interesting that now should be a time when vision finds its place though in that space. And I wonder if you have any insight into why that’s happening now. Is it the influence of drone technologies primarily? Any thoughts there?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
I think that’s definitely a high growth opportunity. Opportunity within that industry. But what I would probably also say is that I think over the last few years, especially machine vision has become a lot more accessible. You know, the pricing pressure that continues to come from the Asian vendors is really making it just much more accessible. And I think there’s a definite need to have vision being used for like defect detection, making sure, you know, the quality of these goods is up to what it should be. And that generally is obviously done better than sort of human inspection and increase in output is obviously just demanding that vision is being supportive of those inspection tasks, that quality assurance, the defect detections as well to support further growth for vision.
Josh Eastburn – host
Yeah, I imagine, well, generally speaking, in my experience, things that are built to military standard have much higher requirements, right, for quality than we might typically see in commercial goods. So I guess that makes sense as a driver as well. You mentioned also the affordability of the technology. I guess for things that are publicly funded, that also makes sense. How much of a factor do you think what, you know, so-called AI technologies in vision have to do with that? Is that helping to drive some of the affordability or accessibility of machine vision within defense or more broadly?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
I think it’s definitely helping with the accessibility really. So the AI models that can be trained are trained to have a higher pass rate generally than traditional software packages. So, you know, when you’re looking at getting that extra 1 or 2% from a output perspective, it can definitely support that. It’s generally easier to train. So it’s becoming more accessible for end customers that may have been skeptical potentially of AI-enabled software. They can see the benefit, they can see it very fast. They can integrate and have it as part of a solution very quickly. But I think it just generally is becoming much more accessible. There’s more companies that are offering it. There’s models that are being built. There’s companies out there that are creating AI software packages that you can train yourself ultimately. So it really is lowering that barrier to entry, even if potentially that first upfront cost may be slightly higher in terms of compared to a traditional software library, but the return on investment is probably seen quicker through those improvements and those gains.
Josh Eastburn – host
It does seem like there has been a bit of an explosion in terms of the number of companies that are getting involved in machine vision specifically around those technologies or because of those technologies. From your perspective as a researcher, did that feel like a natural evolution of where the market was going, or does it feel more like an inflection point?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
No, I think it was more that’s where the market was going. I think none of us, even in our day-to-day life, can really get away from AI anymore. It’s on our phones, it’s everywhere really. So it’s, yeah, I think most businesses are embracing it in some way or another. So yeah, I think it was a natural evolution. I think it’s just when you can quantifiably say, you know, the improvement gains through deploying an AI-enabled smart camera or an AI-enabled software package for a camera, it’s obviously very beneficial when you can start to see return on investment and the business case for doing that.
Josh Eastburn – host
Absolutely. So AI is this umbrella term, right? That really covers a lot of different types of algorithms, technologies, hardware and software. Within that broad umbrella, are there specific technologies that you think are most influential right now, or that are kind of leading that aspect of market development?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Maybe not necessarily within the umbrella of it, but I think what one thing AI is enabling and is becoming maybe more important and customers are perhaps looking for is like the analytics and understanding the data behind. So, you know, really I suppose when you’re using vision and you’re taking an image and you have a pass or fail, or you determine how many items can be picked using a robotic arm and things like that, you know, customers are really trying to understand the analytics of that. How many passes are they getting? When do they not get a pass? What’s driving that? And I think that’s something that AI is solving and over time is going to create even greater growth more broadly for the market where developers can make stronger models, they can make it really show where the issue is or how that’s manifesting. And I think that’s definitely something that’s going to be important and continue to sort of be important over the coming years.
Josh Eastburn – host
One area that we have discussed on the show a couple of times is synthetic image generation. So testing not to do an actual image of a product or of a desired outcome, but generating defects and generating golden images purely based on, you know, sometimes just a CAD file, right? Is that something that’s come up in your research? Is that, do you feel like that has a particular influence? It just seems like a new area of the market that wasn’t possible before a new way of approaching problem solving.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Quite interesting you say that. Yeah. I attended a CEO roundtable in April with some of the CEOs from some of the large German companies as a sort of pre-entrance for the Vision Show that will be coming up later in the year in Germany, in Stuttgart. And that was something that was brought up as part of that. And I’ll be honest, it was one of the, not necessarily the first times I’d heard it, but I’d heard it obviously from CEOs of large companies, large German manufacturers for vision. So I do think that it’s something as part of our new research, we really need to be focusing on as well and trying to get a deeper understanding of what’s going on there. The people in attendance that were on the panel were saying that they had a mixed view, which was probably about the only talking point where they had a mixed view. So it was quite interesting to see that some companies are seeing this as very important and some are saying that perhaps just a bit overhyped at the moment and it’s not necessarily needed right now. But yeah, I think it’s definitely something we would like to look at more.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
And speaking with CEOs from those companies, it’s clearly a mixed bag around what they see currently.
Josh Eastburn – host
Okay. So something we’re still waiting to see the results of perhaps before we can make a judgment. So if someone’s listening to our conversation right now and maybe a business leader considering some of the questions that you’ve mentioned about, you know, market factors that could be influencing their own business, what does your research tell them that they should be paying attention to over the next 3 to 5 years?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yes. I mean, within the written report, really, we try and highlight some of either emerging trends or the key trends. I guess some of the interesting things continue to be AI. It’s hard not to keep saying that it’s going to continue to be interesting and drive market. I think cameras more broadly, they’re becoming much more accessible. The opportunity there is huge as well, utilizing a 3D camera instead of potentially multiple 2D cameras, or just the pricing pressure and the amount of entrants into the market is just helping to bring that price down and make it much more accessible. You mentioned around sort of synthetic, but there’s also things like event-based imaging. So companies like IDS have partnered with Prophesee, and you know, that’s something that could be interesting and continue over the coming years. And then maybe not, I suppose, new trends, but it does feel like, you know, hyperspectral imaging is becoming much higher growth than it was a few years ago. So there’s opportunities there. Some of that, once again, within the defense opportunity as well around utilizing sway cameras, infrared cameras in those sort of scenarios. And then finally, really, I suppose one thing that I found interesting more so recently, just around like the interfaces for cameras and the fact that sort of race to higher speed interfaces seems to be accelerated a bit again, whereas at one point I think companies were looking to have that available in their portfolio, but not necessarily the applications for that.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
But I think once again, this is becoming more accessible. The competition is helping to drive down prices, you know, improve the technology. And so that sort of transition to higher speeds is becoming easier and definitely being used in areas like semiconductors where there needs to be high-resolution image taken and processed extremely fast as well.
Josh Eastburn – host
Okay. When you talk about event-based image capture, from that, I understand that we’re looking for like a high-speed or precision time-based capture, right? So, so an event happens and then we want to take a picture of that as quickly as possible to correlate signals that we’re seeing to what’s happening in the process. Is that the general idea there?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yeah, it’s kind of triggered as opposed to constantly taking images. It’s something is triggering it to take that image, but then it has to take it very fast and processed.
Josh Eastburn – host
Okay, good. Just want to make sure I’m following along there. So you’ve mentioned a few times the report that you do, the annual report on the machine vision market. What is that called? Where could listeners find it if they’re interested in digging into the details?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yeah, they could visit our website, interactanalysis.com. Within there we have our research portfolio and there’s opportunities within there to schedule calls or briefing calls. So ultimately that would generally be with myself for the machine vision report. Also can connect on LinkedIn with myself. I’m quite happy to obviously connect with anybody. We offer essentially free briefing calls around our research to kind of, I suppose, showcase the depth of the research, the data, so people can see what there is. But then within that, we do obviously sell the report. So if companies are interested in subscribing, they could also talk to us about how that looks. Yeah, we work with a lot of the top players already in the market. But there’s always many other companies that potentially could use our research and should probably be using our research to help from an independent research perspective. One thing I haven’t fully touched upon really, with how our report is and our data is structured, we have it really as 15 sort of products, so your different camera types, but then accessories, services, software, et cetera. Then we look at it by 20 industries, end industries, of which 12 are manufacturing industries and 8 are non-manufacturing industries.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
And then by application as well. So looking at autonomous driving, automated assembly, inspection being the dominant application. But what’s probably the most interesting at the moment really is that difference in growth really from the non-manufacturing industries. So where vision has often been always considered as a supporting manufacturing output, visual inspection tasks, there’s actually much stronger growth really coming from non-manufacturing. Some of those are much smaller industries. So one interesting industry there really is sports and entertainment. There’s a lot going on there where machine vision is now being deployed in big sporting events, being used for technology for goal lines, for Hawkeye, things like that, but then also analytics side and, you know, creating that customer engagement, that fan engagement using machine vision to look at some of the stats and what’s going on. It’s just that the industry itself is evolving and evolving perhaps to find new industries and applications all the time that can deploy vision and use vision to really improve either a process or whatever it may be really.
Josh Eastburn – host
Really interesting. I’ve seen so many games and I haven’t really thought very much about how they’re overlaying all of that stuff on the screen and tracking all of the different players and whatnot. Really interesting. Okay. And so that’s also an area of some, at least a new niche that’s growing. Others like that, that are maybe a little bit non-traditional?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
I suppose once again, like things like retail is, you know, deploying vision. So that could be around like inventory management and, you know, stocking of shelves and things like that. It could be using it potentially as, you know, instead of a traditional CCTV camera, potentially using a vision type camera to capture images of things that are going on in a retail environment. We always thought as well that battery manufacturing would be a much stronger growth opportunity, but I think the slowdown, I guess, in EV sort of construction and the pledges that governments had made that are sort of beginning to be backtracked on is not supporting that growth so much. But yeah, I think the non-manufacturing industries are the kind of interesting ones that are seeing some traction. We are also seeing, not necessarily, it’s quite still quite a small base, but opportunities in agriculture as well. So things like crop management, making sure that the right things are picked and they’re picked at the right time, and vision can support those things as well. So it’s very interesting that there continues to be new applications and new opportunities that I suppose ever evolve and ever, I suppose, continue to support that growth for the market more broadly.
Josh Eastburn – host
Very interesting. You mentioned an area that’s not growing as fast as expected. Any other sort of market losers like that? Things that turned out to be maybe bad bets?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yeah, I mean, automotive continues to still be a challenge. It didn’t grow last year in comparison to most other industries, you know, providing some form of growth. And as a large end industry, it’s obviously not good. It has quite a big impact overall.
Josh Eastburn – host
Sure.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
But then some of the, I suppose, the more traditional manufacturing industries where I suppose that growth’s just, you know, a bit lower. So things like glass manufacturing, wood manufacturing, we’re not seeing the same level of growth as some of those bigger industries. And I don’t think I’ve really called it out, but the electronics and electrical industry is a huge industry for Vision, continues to be and will always be. That at the moment as well as it seems to be performing well. It’s such a large industry then offering that sort of incremental growth is just there as a driver over the coming years. And I think that kind of goes back to that point around the inspection tasks and trying to reduce waste, really trying to ensure that pass rate is higher, the quality is right. It’s all things where now Vision is really, I suppose, improving the quality side necessarily more so than just a more basic inspection task.
Josh Eastburn – host
Okay. Yeah, Jonathan, as a wrap-up then, if someone’s listening and wants to get in touch with Interact Analysis to work together, what’s the best way to do that?
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Yes. So if you visit our website, interactanalysis.com, within our website, there is the opportunity to download the brochures for the research. You can download the brochure for our machine vision research. We’ll ask a few questions around who you are and your email address, and then we’ll reach out to you to offer a free briefing call, a free call essentially with myself to discuss the report and obviously understand if we can work more closely together or if you’re interested in subscribing to the research.
Josh Eastburn – host
Okay, perfect. Well, Jonathan, thank you for your insights today.
Jonathan Sparkes – Interact Analysis
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Josh Eastburn – host
That was Jonathan Sparkes, Market Intelligence Analyst at Interact Analysis. Check out the show notes for links to his work and more. Do you have an insight to share about the future of machine vision? If so, connect with me on LinkedIn or reach out via email to josh.eastburn@mvpromedia.com. This episode was produced by Rachelle Kondo and Big Robo. For MVProMedia, I’m Josh Eastburn. Be well.
