U.S. instrument makers have continued to refine tools such as the spectrophotometer and the high-performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC). These innovations, driven in part by basic research advances made by U.S. scientists, have kept U.S.-based manufacturers at the cutting edge of instrumentation, say observers of the scientific equipment market. This has enabled producers to protect their share of the domestic market--the world's largest--and made their instruments competitive abroad. In recent years, however, instrument makers in Japan and Europe have begun to contest the pre-eminent position of U.S. companies, injecting new competition into this global market.
Experts disagree on the exact size of the world market for scientific instruments. "Different people include different things in their definitions of scientific instruments," says Marguerite Nealon, an analyst for the International Trade Administration (ITA) in the U.S. Department of Commerce. But whatever the market's exact size, experts agree that laboratories in the U.S. buy 45 ...
