With each passing year, modular instruments gain ever-more capabilities that were once only possible with benchtop instruments. Assembling a complete test system once required a rack-mount enclosure and multiple other rack-mounted benchtop instruments, along with separate benchtop instruments installed within the rack. Sometimes this required specialized software to operate everything together. Now, an equivalent test system can be formed by inserting instrument modules into one chassis.
As increasingly more test engineers have gained comfort with those modular capabilities and the flexibility such instruments offer, the market for modular technology is positioned for considerable growth for quite some time as its demand rises in the electronic test field.
A report released in August 2018 by research firm MarketsAndMarkets stated the modular instruments market was valued at $1.12 billion in 2017 and is expected to nearly double by 2023 to $2.11 billion, growing at a CAGR of 9.6% from 2018 to 2023. Applications in 5G R&D and infrastructure, along with IoT and IIoT, appear ripe for testing with modular instruments, with one of the only market restraints being the increased penetration of rental and leasing services, as opposed to pure product selling.