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Global 3D Printer Shipment Forecast to Surge 75% in 2014: Gartner

2014/01/06 | By Steve Chuang

With additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, increasingly a buzzword in global manufacturing, global shipment of 3D printers is forecast to surge 75% year-on-year in 2014, and then double in 2015, according to the latest report by Gartner Inc., a British market research firm, regarding the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2014.

Gartner earlier predicted global spending on 3D printers at US$412 million in 2013, over US$325 million of which by companies, and the remainder by consumers, and to shoot up to US$669 million in 2014.

The research firm opines that 3D printers' promising growth potential is mainly driven by simmering consumer demand, which has prompted ever more enterprises to develop and improve such additive manufacturing devices that have already existed for decades into more viable, marketable products catering to consumers. Under the scenario, unit prices of 3D printers will likely drift down to be friendlier to ordinary consumers and, in turn, to help accelerate development of the market.

Application of such devices will expand from prototyping, designing and small-quantity production to construction, industrial production, defense, medical instrument, jewelry industries, and so forth.

In addition to 3D printing, also among 2014's top 10 strategic technology trends identified by Gartner on the report are: mobile device diversity and management; mobile apps and applications; the Internet of Things; hybrid cloud and IT as service broker; cloud/client architecture; the era of personal cloud; smart machines; software-defined anything; and web-scale IT.

Gartner indicates that the strategic technology trends mentioned above are likely to greatly influence and impact global enterprises in the next three years for some factors, including high potential for disruption to IT or business,  need for major dollar investment and risk of late adoption.

In 2014, Gartner emphasizes that the convergence of social, mobile, cloud and information will become a strong driving force to keep revolutionizing the world and bring enterprises new opportunities for growth based on potentially surging demand for advanced programmable infrastructure that can execute at web-scale. (SC)