New market data released.

Profinet shows accelerating growth — PROFINET shows accelerating growth

As in past years, PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International) has initiated a certified count of devices used in the market. The returned figures show that in 2015 the trend of strong growth for PROFINET and PROFIsafe continued while PROFIBUS maintained steady growth. This year for the first time, PI has included IO-Link in the study, which also shows strong growth to around 3.6 million by the end of 2015.

There were 2.8 million new PROFIBUS nodes in the market in 2015. This increased the number of installed PROFIBUS devices to over 53.7 million. Of these, nearly 10 million are incorporated in process automation plants. With a growth rate of newly added nodes of over 33%, the number of PROFINET devices installed now stands at over 12.8 million. Particularly pleasing was the strong growth rate of PROFIsafe of 32%, bringing the total number of installed devices now to 5.4 million.

The trend of strong growth shared by PROFINET and PROFIsafe is not a coincidence. PROFINET is well established in the market and is currently playing a leading role in many industry sectors, such as the automotive industry. Many users are also taking advantage of the switch to Ethernet-based communication in order to implement functional safety via a bus system. That is why a disproportionately high number of PROFINET devices delivered today also include PROFIsafe functionality. Users are also benefiting from the fact that existing PROFIsafe installations with PROFIBUS can continue to be used. PROFIsafe operates independent of the fieldbus and can be used across network boundaries. The future-proof nature of PROFIsafe and its unrivaled technical capabilities and features make it the undisputed market leader among fail-safe bus systems.