Elevators and escalators are an almost invisible part of the infrastructure of large buildings, invisible only in that they are taken for granted by most of their users. For the industry involved in making and servicing these complex machines, invisibility may well be just fine, after all, when attention is drawn to them it is often for all the wrong reasons—slowness, jerkiness, and/or safety problems.

Leaders in this industry include Otis, Schindler, ThyssenKrupp and KONE, each representing around 20% of the world market. The areas of greatest growth in new installations are areas of the world that are seeing the largest increase in both urbanization and high-rise construction. Maintenance of existing machinery is a part of the business that is strongest in the well-established industrialized world and is an important part of this industry.

Today’s market size is the estimated number of new elevator and escalator installations around the world during 2012 as well as the installed base that year.

Geographic reference: World
Year: 2012
Market size: 670,000 new units added to a base of slightly over 11 million
Source: “Elevator and Escalator Market,” published in 2013 by KONE and available here with geographical breakdowns of the global market.
Original source: KONE
Posted on July 1, 2013