Background In 2001, despite the fierce competition in the domestic bar code industry, the characteristics of the bar code industry determined that the entire industry was still growing and expanding steadily.
The bar code industry we are talking about mainly includes bar code scanners, label printers, consumables (tags, ribbons), data collectors, and related proprietary software. The bar code application is widely used in various industries such as industry, commerce, logistics, postal service, etc. It can be said to be one of the most widely used commercial automation technologies. Due to the particularity of barcode knowledge and the specificity of equipment, certain industry barriers are formed; the popularity of barcode knowledge in China is not high, although the application of barcode technology is very wide, but the proportion of investment in the application of the entire automation technology is very small. The domestic bar code market is a professional market for many small factories. It can be said that it is the marginal industry of the automation equipment industry. Therefore, the impact competition and competition are basically at a lower level. The development of the industry is also due to the increasing awareness of bar code applications and the expansion of application requirements. However, after examining and analyzing the development of the bar code industry at home and abroad in the past two years, we believe that the specificity and particularity of the bar code industry are being broken, and the future development of the industry is not optimistic.
The current bar code equipment manufacturers are mostly foreign manufacturers. Along with the decline of foreign economic conditions and China's accession to the WTO, they will increase their investment in the Chinese market. In fact, domestic product price competition has begun, and bar code equipment prices have been declining.
Manufacturers in the domestic industry have begun to show a polarization trend. The stronger the stronger, the weaker the weaker, the industry tends to mature.
Most of the domestic manufacturers are agents and distributors. In 2001, they used value-added services to try to get rid of the simple product price war. Services are valued by more and more manufacturers, but no standardized after-sales service system has yet been established.
The vast majority of domestic manufacturers are selling directly to direct customers, but simply providing equipment can no longer meet the requirements of direct users. Manufacturers take barcode application knowledge as their core and appear as “solution providersâ€. However, due to the limited scale and technology, only a handful of companies have actually been able to provide users with solutions.
The application of wireless network collectors significantly increases the technical complexity of the barcode industry. Most of the companies in the industry are small and can't cope with technological challenges.
The future and development of the bar code industry depends on the large-scale application of data collectors. However, the collectors gradually become increasingly out of the bar code industry as their applications become increasingly widespread. Data collection is becoming a standard, universal mobile computer application and a branch of mobile computing.
Problems With the general improvement of bar code knowledge, bar code equipment and specificity are reduced. How long can bar code knowledge exist as barriers to protection in the bar code industry? This barrier is the sole reliance on the survival of many domestic manufacturers engaged in this industry.
Will "full solution provider" in the industry field cover bar code professional solutions? Some complete industry application solution providers have begun to cover bar code professional solutions, such as suppliers of warehouse application solutions. This will have a strong impact on manufacturers who are engaged in bar code professional solutions.
Will the new application of mobile computing completely cover the application of collectors? This poses a threat to barcode-specific systems that will come from software vendors.
The competition between agents and distributors has become increasingly fierce. At present, most manufacturers compete on prices, and there is no established after-sales service system to provide effective value-added services. Will there be vicious competition in the industry? This is a problem that the bar code equipment industry should pay close attention to.
With the trend of bar code technology becoming more mature, the industry is becoming more and more widely used, and the bar code industry has become more closely connected with the IT mainstream, showing a convergence trend.
In the retail industry, suppliers of complete industry solutions for POS systems and business management systems will include the application of bar code equipment in the solution to the customer.
The label printer market will develop steadily, but users will put forward higher requirements, such as access to manufacturing execution systems, rather than simply purchasing equipment.
The logistics industry is in its infancy, and the bar code industry manufacturers are equipment suppliers. They will seize the opportunity and make it a new hot spot for the bar code industry.
The collector will be separated from the bar code industry and become a branch of the computing industry market. Its application software will be more complex and closer to applications in the industry.
Bar code industry, large agents will establish a nationwide after-sales service system to provide modern, high-quality localization services.