Handheld scanner sales total $1 billion

By Staff -- Logistics Management, 11/1/1999

The global market for handheld bar-code scanners reached about $1 billion in 1998, while the market for stationary bar-code scanners hit $825 million, according to market-research firm Venture Development Corp. (VDC) of Natick, Mass.

VDC said growth in the market for handheld bar-code scanners was proving a challenge for suppliers, which faced "progressive commoditization" of their products as more end users selected equipment solely on price. According to the research firm's figures, Symbol Technologies captured the number one slot in this challenging market, with 35 percent of the $1 billion market. The number two manufacturer was Denso, with 10 percent of the market. (See chart.) VDC said that Denso realized much of its success from the growing implementation of its two-dimensional code in Asia-Pacific and other world markets.

NCR maintained its position as the top vendor among stationary scanner makers, with a 14-percent share of that $825 million market. PSC was the number two vendor, with a 13-percent market share, followed by Accu-Sort with 11 percent and Symbol with 10 percent.

VDC's analysts noted that the overall stationary scanner market had shown slower revenue growth than in previous years. It attributed that slowdown to the maturing of stationary scanners as a form of industrial technology and the increased saturation of that product in core markets.

By contrast, the global market for bar-code printers reached $1.65 billion in 1998, VDC said. Zebra Technologies, which recently acquired Eltron, was the number one vendor among printer suppliers, with some 20 percent of that market. Intermec ranked number two with a 9-percent market share. Printronix and VideoJet ranked third, each with an 8-percent market share.

VDC noted that the bar-code printer market had been growing by approximately 10 percent over the past few years. The company forecast that the market for those products would grow between 10 and 12 percent annually through the year 2002.