Spending on 3D printing — including hardware, materials, software, and services — will grow 19.9 percent to nearly $12 billion in 2018, according to IDC.
Worldwide spending on 3D printing will be nearly $20 billion by 2021 with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.5 percent.
3D printers and materials will account for roughly two thirds of the spending total, reaching $6.9 billion and $6.7 billion respectively in 2021.
Services spending will be reaching $5.5 billion in 2021 — led by on-demand parts services and systems integration services.
Purchases of 3DP software will grow more slowly than the overall market with a five-year CAGR of 18.6 percent.
Discrete manufacturing will be delivering more than half of all 3D printing spending throughout the 2017-2021 forecast.
Healthcare providers will be spending nearly $1.3 billion on 3D printing in 2018, followed by education ($974 million) and consumer ($831 million).
IDC expects professional services and retail to move ahead of the consumer segment by 2021. The industries that will see the fastest growth in 3D printing spending over the five-year forecast are the resource industries (38.4 percent CAGR) and healthcare (35.4 percent CAGR).
“3D printing solutions have moved well beyond prototyping, to become prevalent within and across multiple industries,” said Marianne D’Aquila, research manager, Customer Insights and Analysis at IDC.
The leading use cases for 3D printing are prototypes, aftermarket parts, and parts for new products. As the primary use cases for the discrete manufacturing industry, these three use cases will account for 44 percent of worldwide spending in 2018.
By 2021, dental objects and medical support objects will be the fourth and fifth largest use cases, largely driven by the healthcare provider industry.
The two use cases that will see the fastest spending growth – tissue/organ/bone (56.6 percent CAGR) and dental objects (36.9 percent CAGR) – will also be driven by healthcare provider spending.
“Advancements and breakthroughs on the technology side are fueling wider adoption and greater utilization of 3D printing systems across a range of industries,” said Tim Greene, research director, Hardcopy Peripherals and 3D Printing.
The United States will be the region with the largest spending total in 2018 ($4.1 billion) followed by Western Europe ($3.5 billion).
China will be the third largest region with more than $1.5 billion in spending this year, followed by Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the Middle East and Africa (MEA), and the rest of Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan).
The regions that will see the fastest growth over the 2017-2021 forecast period are Latin America (27.2 percent CAGR) and CEE (26.0 percent CAGR). Six of the nine geographic regions will experience compound annual growth rates greater than 20 percent over the five-year forecast period.
Image source: Autodesk
