While Cognex has many applications in the electronics industry, including SMD placement and inspection, virtually any product that is manufactured in either high volume, high accuracy, low cost or a combination of all three can be made better, faster, and less expensively using machine vision.
In order to continue to grow our business, we spend a lot of time on market research- trying to understand our core markets such as semiconductor and electronics, factory automation and surface inspection--and invest heavily in R&D and new product development to address new applications in those markets.
Over the last few years we also have done a lot of work looking at adjacent markets, such as logistics and life science, and have invested in new products to address the needs in these spaces. For example, in 2011 we introduced a new ID reader targeted at the $150 million barcode reading segment for the logistics market.
In 2011, we ramped up investments in new engineering and sales resources to achieve one of our best years in the history of the company in terms of revenue and profits. We expect the momentum to continue into 2012 and will be hiring and introducing several innovative new products.
