What economic downturn? New analysis from market research firm Frost & Sullivan estimates that despite a fiscal climate that has forced some bioinformatics companies to sharply cut their earnings forecasts and refocus their business models, the US bioinformatics industry is poised for substantial growth.
Frost & Sullivan estimated that US bioinformatics companies generated revenues of $1.38 billion in 2000 and is projecting a compound annual growth rate of 24 percent for the industry, bringing the 2007 market value to $6.9 billion.
In a conference call to discuss the findings detailed in the companys recently published report, US Bioinformatics Markets, senior industry analyst Brad Peters said the company split the market into four distinct segments to conduct its analysis: software in support of hardware for genetic sequence data generation; stand-alone genetic sequence analysis systems; genetic sequence data management systems; and content providers.
Not surprisingly, the market for sequencing instrumentation software was forecast to have the slowest growth rate of all the segments. Frost & Sullivan projected the 2000 market of $426 million for this segment to grow to approximately $1.8 billion by 2007.
The stand-alone analysis segment which Peters described as including software for genomic sequence analysis, gene mapping, linkage analysis, primer selection, sequence homology mapping, SNP mapping, expression profiling, and protein structure prediction was forecast to have the greatest growth, from $261 million in 2000 to $2.4 billion by 2007. Software for mass spectrometry and 2D gel analysis was not included in this segment, Peters said.
The combined market for the data management and content provider segments, $688 million in 2000, is projected to grow to $2.7 billion in 2007. Peters said the segments are of roughly equal size.
BT