The Global Computer-aided Engineering (CAE) market is going through a sea change. Currently, the global CAE vendors generate around 63 percent of their revenue from developed countries like US, Germany, Japan, UK and France. But this would change in all likelihood.
In the developing world CAE adoption is gaining momentum. In the APAC region countries such as India, China, Korea, and Malaysia are using more and more CAE tools to augment their production facilities. According to one estimate the APAC region was the second largest market for the global CAE vendors with 32 percent market share in 2012. The growth of several discrete manufacturing industries in the APAC is driving this growth. Discrete manufacturing industry widely uses the CAE software products to accomplish various engineering tasks.
Growth in outsourcing of engineering services to the APAC region from the developed economies is also responsible for this rise in demand for CAE software. Electronics, semiconductor and automotive industries are growing at a healthy rate in this region creating opportunities for the global CAE vendors.
Apart from the APAC region other developing countries like-Brazil, Czech Republic, Argentina, Israel, and Mexico will play a significant role in the growth of CAE market. Many vendors have started to focus on these developing countries as well for their future growth through building partnerships, mergers and acquisitions and strategic alliances.
It is interesting to note that CAE itself consists of two major tools—finite element analysis (FEA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Currently the CFD segment is growing faster than the FEA segment but the FEA has a larger share in the overall CAE market.
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|
Revenue Share (%) |
|
|
FEA |
CFD |
|
|
Middle East |
32 |
68 |
|
North America |
62 |
38 |
|
South America |
60 |
40 |
|
Europe |
59 |
41 |
Global CAE vendors like Ansys offers both CFD and FEA products to several process and discrete manufacturing industries. Another global vendor CD-adapco Group provides CFD solutions for the automotive industry and various other industries. The company has started to offer its CFD solutions on mobile computing devices. PLM software major Dassault Systèmes has a limited presence in the CFD segment. It can be safely predicted that vendors with strong presence in CFD segment are on the right course as it has been expanding faster than FEA.
