Frost & Sullivan, in their report “Growth Opportunities by Vertical Application Sector In the European Uninterruptible Power Supply Market“, find that the market earned $1.98 billion in 2012 and estimates this will reach $2.3 billion in 2015. The research covers a range of vertical application segments including data centres, healthcare, commercial, industrial and public/infrastructure.
The market expansion will be supported by the escalating demand for reliable power across all end-user segments. The data centre segment, in particular, will offer tremendous scope for UPS sales.
“The demand for continuous power availability has become the most important driver for the European UPS market,” says Frost & Sullivan Energy & Power Supplies Industry Analyst Gautham Gnanajothi. “For certain end users like banks and data centres, power availability is crucial; even a minute of downtime leads to huge monetary losses. This is pushing the demand for smart, reliable and highly energy-efficient UPS systems.”
“Data centres currently contribute about 40 per cent of the entire UPS sales in Europe, with this contribution expected to increase over the years,” says Gnanajothi. “Innovative, energy-efficient UPS systems are set to make strong gains in this segment.”
Frost & Sullivan see two main challenges for the coming years:
As competition intensifies, participants are being forced to reduce their prices. Such price pressures are limiting the growth and margins of most manufacturers, while affecting overall market revenues. Gnanajothi: “However, this trend is changing as end users realise that comparatively higher-priced, energy-efficient UPS systems enable considerable savings in terms of total cost of ownership.”
Another challenge is that customers are often unable to accurately estimate their power needs. Considering this, manufacturers need to be more proactive in educating clients about their power needs. For this, a more consultative approach is needed wherein manufacturers or distributors work closely with customers to determine their power requirements.
