Ulrich Leidecker, President of the Business Area Industry Management and Automation, spoke at a press conference held at the SPS specialist automation trade fair in Nuremburg (November 26-28, 2019) about the development of Phoenix Contact’s business situation in a year that was characterized by an uncertain global political situation.
As in the previous year, regional sales performance has been relatively consistent in 2019. However, growth has been more moderate. While Phoenix Contact Group grew by another 8% in 2018, a growth of just 3% to 4% is expected to be recorded in 2019. While this outcome is still acceptable, considering the general economic trend, it’s still significantly below our original expectations. Sales at the end of 2019 will be just under 2.5 billion euros.
As in previous years, our outlay for research and development is approximately 7% of global sales. The total number of employees will have increased by approximately 400 to almost 17,900 in 2019.
Solutions for digitalization
At last year’s trade fair, Phoenix Contact launched the PLCnext Store, a platform for industrial software solutions. Software providers are able to make their software available on this digital marketplace as apps. This means that solutions for automation tasks are made accessible which other users with similar application scenarios can benefit from without having to carry out their own, and therefore duplicated, development work. For many, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, keeping-up with market developments often means huge efforts. Both parties therefore benefit from this business model. This new approach to cooperation between users and manufacturers has now become reality. In addition to this software exchange app store, Phoenix Contact also provides tutorials on YouTube to give participants access to discussion forums and questions. The growing number of users is clear evidence of the need for faster and more flexible information procurement.
For the first time, Phoenix Contact has demonstrated the Axioline Smart Elements I/O modules (for sending and receiving data and signals), which save space and can be used in all standard Ethernet networks, i.e., regardless of the system. A decisive factor is that these are modular in design. In future, users can plug their chosen functions into a carrier module via adapter and create an I/O module themselves to suit the requirements of their own application.
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