Market
The targeted markets for Sensor Designs are the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) and construction tools for our handheld rangefinder product and the industrial and OEM distance sensors for our miniature sensor module. Due to the relatively high cost of existing handheld products, sales have primarily flowed into the construction trades and historically mainly in Europe. Based on a competitive analysis, roughly 1 million units have been sold through the end of 2006 worldwide with roughly 250K in use in the United States. The sensor market is presently highly specialized for such applications as crane control, monitoring the position of elevator cars, printing and rolling, liquid-level control, bin-level control and profiling.
Suitable market segments for the product in construction include: Support professions such as architects/surveying, real estate agents and building inspectors and the trades which includes supervisors & managers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers and painters. Based on the BLA (Bureau of Labor Statistics) the total for supporting professionals and skilled trades is 3.5 million. Based on the number units in service and the TAM we can estimate that there is less than 5-7 % market penetration.
DIY homeowners represent the largest market potential. Based on BLA statistics there are roughly 77 million homeowners in the US with an expenditure on household equipment and expenses in excess of 100 billion dollars a year. If we assume that roughly 50% of these homeowners are involved in projects around the home, and 25% of those individuals have sufficient need for line-of-sight distance measurement, a market size in excess of 10 million can be estimated. Assuming an average unit cost of $40 dollars gives us a market size of in excess $400 million dollars.
The industrial sensor market is an over $1 billion dollar market with roughly $250 million dollars going to distance measurement sensors. These sensors are referred to as non-contact displacement sensors, have requirements ranging from very short-range sensors with a 1/1000th of inch accuracy, to sensors measuring distances hundreds of feet or more with 1/10th of an inch requirements. These systems are priced from a low of $300 up to $5,000 dollars. Based on our anticipated customer pricing between $30 and $100 dollars, lower performance ultrasonic sensors will likely be the competition at ranges above a few feet. Ultrasonic products offers range from a low priced $30 modules for low accuracy applications such as proximity detection and object avoidance to specialized sensors costing up to over $500 for high performance industrial applications.