AM Industry Analysis and Market Data

VoxelMatters is a market research and media company specializing in the additive manufacturing industry. Through our VoxelMatters Research division, we provide in-depth AM industry analysis and market data, along with insights, and strategic consulting to help companies navigate the latest trends and identify market opportunities.

Our reports are built upon first-hand data collected directly from industry partners, along with public information gathered by the VoxelMatters team. Using the VoxelMatters Directory—the world’s largest verified additive manufacturing company database, with over 7,500 listings—we identified 1,541 company entries as key stakeholders within the scope of our reports. These include 409 hardware manufacturers, 356 material suppliers, and 776 service providers, active across the polymer, metal, and ceramic AM segments.

Through an extensive 200-question survey, data and insights were collected directly from key stakeholders. This first-hand data was compared and combined with supplementary data collected by our team from all publicly available information on revenue and production capabilities for each company included in our reports. In addition to the regular interviews with key AM market stakeholders we do as part of our daily coverage of AM industry news, the team also conducted extensive research interviews with industry operators—as well as independent consultants—to further verify and refine the collected data, estimates and analyses.
In total, the raw data collected comprises of over 268,000 data points, drawing an accurate and detailed picture of the current global AM market.

Confidentiality

We value our partners’ trust, which is why we take the confidentiality of the information they share with us very seriously. The raw data collected through surveys is only ever seen by the VoxelMatters research team.

The data collected is combined with additional public data and analyzed in aggregate to form the basis of our overall market estimates and forecasts. In published market reports, we only show segment trends (e.g. the number of parts by technology, volumes sold by material, etc) and overall market shares—we do not specify company sales data (e.g. hardware units sold, revenues etc) unless we’re certain that it’s already publicly available information (e.g., from press releases, annual reports etc).

Data segmentation

Carefully segmenting our data is an important part of our work. This is what allows us to uncover patterns that may not be immediately apparent in the larger dataset. This leads to a more nuanced and informed analysis of the underlying data, ultimately driving better decision-making for our clients.

Below are the major segmentations in our database.

Price segments

Our database considers all companies and all products available today in the additive manufacturing industry. The hardware dataset is organized into six price categories. These categories include Consumer (priced under $1,000), Prosumer (priced $1,000–$5,000), Professional (priced $5,000–$50,000), Entry-level Industrial (priced $50,000–$100,000), Mid-level Industrial (priced $100,000–$300,000), and High-level Industrial (priced over $300,000).

This is important to add nuance to our analyses.

For example, the sales volume of Consumer 3D printers is carefully considered in our analyses. This is because the number of low-cost 3D printers shipped each year —almost entirely in the polymer segment and predominantly from Chinese manufacturers —is orders of magnitude larger than that of professional-level systems. Without price segments, the data would be significantly skewed.

To put this into context, whilst industrial systems (those priced between $100,000 and $300,000+) sales represented 78% of the overall revenues generated in 2022, they accounted for just 1% of all units sold. An easy option is to remove low-cost systems from our analyses, but at 22% of all hardware revenues (a figure close to $1 billion), we believe any accurate analysis of the global additive manufacturing market cannot ignore this price segment.
Countries and Regions
Our database covers companies in 98 unique countries across EMEA (56%), NA (26%), APAC (16%) and LATAM (1%).

Forecast model

All the data collected by VoxelMatters each year provides the basis of our 10-year forecasts for all key metrics in AM hardware, materials and services segments. These forecasts are based on our proprietary forecast model, which is refined every year and considers multiple variables translated into coefficients that affect both product demand and sale revenue growth. These are then compared to establish the trend for average product price and estimate each product area’s growth trend.

The underlying premise is that all AM technologies will experience significant growth over the next 10 years. However, some technologies will grow faster and at different intervals than others. The assessment of overall industry growth is based on hardware growth trends which were estimated by converting several influencing factors into growth coefficients affecting yearly sales, average prices and installed base.

The current database covers 2020 to 2024, with forecasts through 2034.