Industrial Ethernet now bigger than fieldbuses

“We have seen the transition to industrial Ethernet for a long time, but it isn’t until now that it has actually overtaken fieldbuses when it comes to number of new installed nodes,” says Anders Hansson, Chief Marketing Officer at HMS. “The transition to industrial Ethernet is driven by the need for high performance, integration between factory installations and IT/IoT-systems, as well as the Industrial Internet of Things in general.”

Boosted by a strong industry and cyber-security concerns in the industry, fieldbuses are still growing slightly. However, despite an increased growth rate at 6% (4 last year), the number of fieldbus installations are expected to decline steadily over the next few years. The dominant fieldbus is still PROFIBUS with 12% of the total world market, followed by Modbus-RTU and CC-Link, both at 6%.