Chinese antibody market powers ahead
Today we return to our first ever data report, released three years ago, when we claimed that China was a market no supplier could ignore, and we look at new data to see whether our predictions came true.
Back in 2014 we stated that ‘the data suggests that China is set to claim the lion’s share of global bioscience research’ and we made the prediction that the Chinese antibody market would be overtaking the United States within five to ten years.
In fact we went as far as to say that the Chinese proportion of the global antibody market would be worth as much as 20 – 25 per cent by the end of 2016.
Well three years down the line, our new data for global antibody use shows that the biggest market to change since 2014 is indeed China – and our latest data shows that at the end of 2016 the Chinese antibody market represented 23 per cent of the global market, slap bang in the middle of our prediction range.
Rhys Williams, Product manager at CiteAb, said: “This growth in citations for antibody use from China does very directly translate to increasing sales. Our data suggests that sales in China from a number of suppliers are rocketing, while others may be missing the boat.
“A clear winner is Abcam, which recently reported a near 30 per cent growthin its Chinese sales – the company is clearly cracking this market.”
The Abcam interim results report states: “China continues to be our fastest growing major market where we have been successful in growing both our non-primary as well as core primary businesses.”
However, the Chinese market isn’t without its challenges for suppliers – beyond the more obvious associated with marketing, languages and culture barriers.
Just two weeks ago the journal Nature highlighted the challenge suppliers and researchers face in dealing with a large counterfeit reagent market in China. Counterfeit products, produced to look just like those from large antibody suppliers, seriously risk brand reputation damage. (We’ll be following up on this challenge here on our blog next week…)
Rhys adds: “While it is clear that cracking the Chinese market isn’t an easy ride for suppliers, the data suggests growth will remain strong and as a result we continue to believe this exciting market is key for every antibody supplier.”
Today we’re giving away the data for the top five countries for antibody market growth for free – to get your copy please sign up below. If you’d like to discuss this data in more detail with us, as usual please do get in touch with us and we’d be happy to talk through the options.
– Matt and the CiteAb team
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