n NEWS July/August 2026 www.drivesncontrols.com 8 INDUSTRIAL ETHERNET ACCOUNTED for 79% of all new industrial networking nodes installed worldwide during 2025 – up from 76% in 2024 – according to the latest annual survey of the industrial networking market conducted by HMS Networks. At the same time, fieldbus technologies continued their longterm decline, accounting for just 14% of new nodes, down from 17% the previous year. After a slowdown in 2024, the industrial networking market stabilised in 2025. The industrial Ethernet market grew by 12% last year, and wireless communications by 8%, while the fieldbus market shrank by 11%. HMS expects the number of new nodes to be installed over the coming five years to grow by around 7.7% a year, on average. Much of this will be driven by migration of the remaining fieldbus installations to Industrial Ethernet. Three industrial Ethernet protocols – Profinet, Ethernet/IP and EtherCat – together accounted for 75% of the global industrial Ethernet market last year, with all three increasing their market shares. Profinet rose from 27% in 2024 to 30% in 2025, EtherNet/IP climbed from 23% to 25%, and EtherCat grew from 17% to 20%. Trailing some way behind were Modbus TCP, which held steady at 5%, CC-Link IE, which remained stable at 3%, and Powerlink which slipped from 3% to 1%. Wireless technologies appear to have stalled, accounting for 7% of new node installations in 2025 – unchanged from 2024. Wireless retains its role as a complement to wired industrial networks, particularly for mobile equipment, machinery retrofits, and IIoT sensors located in hard-to-reach places. Although there is still significant interest in 5G, its rate of deployment in industrial applications remains slow. The most commonly cited barrier to its wider use is the complexity of private 5G infrastructures. The technology has yet to deliver the breakthrough in adoption that many in the industry had been expecting. Installations of new Profibus nodes dropped from 1.1 million in 2024 to 1 million in 2025 – a 9% decline. Profibus remains the largest player in the fieldbus market, but dropped from 5% to 4% of the industrial networking market. Modbus RTU held steady at 3%, reflecting its continued role as a universal low-cost serial protocol, while CC-Link, DeviceNet and CAN/CANopen each remain in the 1–2% range, with modest further declines. Profinet and EtherCat continue to lead the market in Europe, with strong activity around SPE (Single Pair Ethernet) for sensor-level connectivity, and APL (Advanced Physical Layer) for process automation. The decline of Profibus is most evident in Europe, where migration to Profinet is most advanced. Both Profinet and EtherCat are continuing to expand in the Chinese market, while CC-Link IE maintains a stong foothold in Asia. HMS Networks’ analysis is based on a combination of market insights, internal data, and input from key stakeholders in the industrial automation industry. When HMS started to publish its figures for the industrial networking market in 2015, Ethernet accounted for just 34% of new nodes. “Twelve years of data tell a remarkably consistent story,” says Magnus Jansson, HMS Networks’ director of product marketing. “The migration from fieldbus to Industrial Ethernet is now in its later stages, but the more interesting question is what happens next. “When nearly everything is Ethernet, the conversation shifts from ‘which protocol?’ to ‘what is running on top of it?’, functional safety, cybersecurity, TSN, OPC UA, SPE and IT/OT convergence. That is where the complexity, and the differentiation, will increasingly sit. “The 2026 numbers also reinforce something we have been seeing in our industry survey: cybersecurity is now cited by nearly half of respondents as a top integration challenge, and 93% expect OT cybersecurity to change substantially over the next five years,” he adds “The protocols matter, but the layers above them increasingly define how factories actually operate.” More News reports on our Web site We post many more news reports on our Web site than we have space for in the magazine. Often the site also carries longer, more detailed versions of reports in the magazine. Here are some of the stories posted since the previous issue of Drives & Controls. n US firm raises $18m to slash control panel build times by two thirds https://drivesncontrolsnews/2y0bmqg8 n Industrial AI plan aims to boost UK productivity by 2.5% https://drivesncontrolsnews/sdm6yah0 n 25% of UK manufacturers have moved production abroad – or could do so https://drivesncontrolsnews/jr3oidvz n Frameless motors result in small, power-dense geared actuators https://drivesncontrolsnews/qfk6a0eh n UK agentic AI platform could ‘revolutionise’ manufacturing productivity https://drivesncontrolsnews/jyni72pp n Skills shortages risk billions in AI productivity gains for UK manufacturers https://drivesncontrolsnews/xn2mpwvx n Fanuc works with Google to implement physical AI in robots https://drivesncontrolsnews/yrcxf5fg n MTC launches robot experience centre to boost automation take-up in UK https://drivesncontrolsnews/ud89tc39 n Austrian project uses AI to boost efficiency of industrial drives https://drivesncontrolsnews/d7cgxdhh n Congatec and Codesys join forces to virtualise real-time control https://drivesncontrolsnews/1thrkv16 n ABB links up with prosthetics pioneer to revolutionise robotic dexterity https://drivesncontrolsnews/yfajzpqc n 3D sensor ends safety bottlenecks for robots and industrial automation https://drivesncontrolsnews/x1c2jeae Industrial Ethernet dominates with 79% of new nodes in 2025 Three protocols dominate the global industrial Ethernet market, accounting for 7%% of new node installations (Source: HMS Networks)
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjQ0NzM=