Routine Becomes Commonplace Although advancing technology remains an important aspect of instrument companies’ product development and reputation, companies are putting greater emphasis on instrumentation for so-called routine applications, such as quality analysis and quality control testing, or other nonresearch applications. Many of the fastest growing markets, including food and beverage and metals testing, do not […]

The Indian government released its fiscal 2007–08 (starting April 1) budget on February 28. The budget contained favorable news for instrument companies and their customers. The annual budget for the Ministry of Science and Technology rose 46% to Rs3,271 ($74.0 million). Within the Ministry, the Department of Science and Technology received a 58% increase in […]

Atomic Spectroscopy Bruker AXS, following the acquisition of Quantron (see IBO 9/15/06), released “Brukerized” versions of Quantron’s arc-spark instruments around the first of the year. The Q6 Columbus is a laboratory system, as is the Q8 Magellan, which is priced at about $65,000. The Q8 Coronado (based on the Magellan) is an automated system for […]

The fiscal 2007 federal budget was finally signed into law by President Bush on February 15. The law makes permanent most of the funding amounts in the continuing resolution passed by Congress in December 2006 that essentially froze agency and program budgets at fiscal 2006 levels. However, Congress did provide funding increases for selected programs […]

While President Bush’s proposed budget for FY08 would increase the total federal R&D investment by 1.4% to $143.0 billion, federal support of basic and applied research would decline to $55.4 billion, a 2% drop from the FY07 budget. Not including NASA, the total budget increase for nondefense R&D agencies is only 0.8%, below the national […]

With 15 of the 23 Laboratory Instrument Sales Index companies reporting calendar year-end results, fourth quarter 2006 revenues grew an estimated 10.5% to $4,131 million. Fourth quarter operating profit growth rebounded from a year ago, improving 8.0% to $707 million. However, operating margin dropped 40 basis points to 17.1% of sales. The five largest instrument […]

According to the FDA, 10% of drugs in the world are counterfeit. The World Health Organization (WHO) takes a more nuanced view: according to the organization, less than 1% of drugs in developed nations are counterfeit, but 10% of drugs in developing economies are counterfeit. However, in parts of Latin America, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan […]

Major restructurings of R&D operations were announced earlier this year by two of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer and Roche. Such announcements are becoming more common for so-called “big pharma” (see IBO 4/15/05, 4/15/06), as many of the world’s 10 largest drug firms struggle to maintain historical levels of profitability during a period of […]

There were a number of changes to this month’s IBO stock table. A new stock index was created, the Diversified Instrumentation Stock Index, which consists of six large companies (Agilent Technologies, AMETEK, Danaher, Mettler-Toledo International, Roper Industries and Teledyne Technologies) that manufacture a wide variety of products, including analytical and life science instruments. Other changes […]