The global additive manufacturing market 2018 is worth $9.3 billion

SmarTech Publishing, the leading industry analysis firm specializing in additive manufacturing markets, has published its year-end AM market review, with the global additive manufacturing market 2018, including hardware, software, materials and services, standing at $9.3 billion in generated revenues after growing 18%.

The report, titled 2019 Additive Manufacturing Market Outlook and Summary of Opportunities, is a new offering from SmarTech Publishing, further establishing the company as a key player in collection and analysis of AM market data and metrics, not just for the present but also for the future. The new report, which also presents a summary and forecast of the total additive manufacturing industry for 2018 through 2027, is packaged for the first time with an encompassing database of key market sizing and forecasting data, tracking the entirety of additive manufacturing value chain and activity from hardware, to materials, to software, to part production services throughout 2018, while providing valuable insight into the future.

The analysis focuses on providing segmented market data and insights for the metals and polymer additive manufacturing segments while highlighting the most influential activities across AM markets. These include key segments such as aerospace, healthcare, automotive, service bureaus, and emerging opportunities like consumer goods, energy, and industrial.

The additive manufacturing market 2018

The new report from SmarTech Publishing is meant to act as a resource for companies and or business units wanting to track progress in additive manufacturing across the value chain who also need in-depth market data to quantify growth and key metrics in the industry such as hardware installations by print technology and market, material shipments by material type, value of outsourced part production by industry, and much more. The accompanying database includes over X data tables providing users with an unmatched off-the-shelf set of market-wide data while summarizing the key drivers and trends in the industry and advising on expectations for 2019 and beyond.

In 2018, the additive manufacturing market appears to have regained an important element in its evolution –balanced growth. All segments appear to now be progressing and growing in similar fashion, with shared goals and solutions which span segments. This positive development is observed in entities such as 3D Systems and Stratasys seeing more consistently positive growth results in the face of a significantly more complex competitive landscape than prior years, and the hard-won successes of these two companies in 2018 helped contribute to the polymer AM segment growing to an estimated nearly $5.5B

Market success in 2018 has been predicated on two driving trends. The first is the effect of a rapid strategic importance placed on additive manufacturing by large multinational corporations spanning the global chemical and materials communities to developers of traditional machine tools and industrial lasers. Second is the continued efforts of the industry to focus their strategies on applications, especially ones which provide growth that is largely complimentary  -not competitive –with existing manufacturing processes and machine tools

Top 5 most influential market engagements and moves highlighted in the study which are believed to have profound effects on the industry in 2019 and beyond include HP’s willingness to bet on its own technology for manufacturing large quantities of parts for its own printers using its own 3D printing process, startup Velo3D’s unveiling of its proprietary laser powder bed fusion technology, the release of the Arcam Spectra-H high temperature electron beam melting system, Carbon’s production-friendly material pricing strategy, and more. All identified “Top 5” metrics are analyzed in the report in terms of future impact to the industry.