The Middle East market for test and measuring equipment was $130 million in 2012, representing 8 per cent growth over the previous year, according to a report of business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan’s automation and electronics analyst.

“This market is expected to grow by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.6 per cent to reach $245 million by 2017,” the report said.

The test and measuring equipment analysed for the report comprised general purpose test equipment, communication test equipment and non-destructive test (NDT) equipment. All three types of tools registered growth in 2012 over the previous year.

The market for general purpose test equipment rose to $49 million from $46.3 million and is expected to reach $54.2 million by 2017 for a CAGR of 2 per cent.

FASTEST SEGMENT
Expectations are that the communication test equipment market will grow fastest in the period until 2017.  It grew to $39.3 million in 2012 from $34.9 million in 2011 with expectations it will reach $120.32 million in 2017 for a CAGR of 25.1 per cent. Moderate rise is anticipated for the NDT equipment segment over the next few years. It grew to $40.68 million in 2012 from $38.23 million in 2011 and could rise to $70 million in 2017 for a CAGR of 11.5 per cent.

The general purpose test equipment includes the following product types: power meters, logic anlaysers, spectrum analysers, network analysers, electronic counters, multimeters and oscilloscopes.

Included in the communication test equipment are the following product types: LTE testers, wireless test equipment, xDSL testers and gigabit Ethernet testers.

MARKET TRENDS
Frost & Sullivan’s automation and electronics analyst witnessed several trends in the Middle East test equipment market:

A MetraScan 3D scanner from Creaform

• Deployment  and  proliferation  of  4G  LTE  networks  by  most  of  the  Middle  Eastern  operators  such  as Qatar’s Qtel, Saudi Arabia’s Mobility and the UAE’s Etisalat is driving the need for requisite infrastructure and network testing gear.

• The Middle East is the largest oil-producing region globally and this generates immense demand for non-destructive testing equipment. The need to reassess the integrity of existing infrastructure and a rebound of key end-user industries in the Middle East will spur demand for NDT equipment. Approximately 45 per cent of the world’s oil is produced in the Middle East. Therefore oil and gas is the largest end user segment for the NDT industry in the Middle East.

• There is continuing demand for increased bandwidth speed, installation of fibre-to-the-home capacity, need for more wavelength and, in turn, sophisticated equipment in the core network. Therefore, the Middle East is expected to offer comparatively better growth for the fibre optic test equipment market because of opportunities in infrastructure.

• There  is  seen  a  surging  demand  for  wireless  testers  (comprising  mobile  base  station  testers,  drive testers, mobile backhaul testing) driven by the factors of: high wireless penetration rates, shift to LTE, increased usage of smart devices and rapid proliferation of wireless applications like mobile banking, telemedicine etc. 

• The Middle East test equipment market is witnessing a preference for used/refurbished testers as also for leased test equipment market. This has resulted in recent years in the entry of system integrators/resellers who offer leased equipment. Leased equipment results in lower cost of ownership. Further, in some instances such as network testing, the testers might be used only during network deployment and could be idle thereafter. Leasing helps in eliminating the locked investments in such idle testers. 

• Global leading test equipment  vendors such as Agilent, NI,  Tektronix, Anritsu, Rohde and  Schwartz, Aeroflex, Spirent, Ixia, EXFO, JDSU, Yokogawa, Lecroy, Fluke Networks etc are some of the prominent vendors for general purpose test and communication test equipment in the Middle East.

• Prominent vendors for NDT testers that are deployed in higher volumes in the oil and gas industry include players  such as GE Measurement  and Control  Solutions; Olympus NDT; YXLON International GmbH; Institut Dr  Foerster; Karl Storz GmbH & Co KG, Sonatest PLC; Sonotron NDT; Carestream; Nikon Metrology and Fujifilm NDT amongst others.