Industrial Ethernet Numbers Published for Profinet

PI, the organization responsible for Profibus and Profinet, has announced that 1.14 million Profinet nodes were installed by the end of 2007. The figures were collected by 'notary' so they are the first to be independently verified in the industrial Ethernet field.

New PNO Chairman Joerg Freitag said that the total number had been derived from data submitted to the notary by vendor companies and not even he knew the product or vendor breakdown. Only real field devices were counted he said, and infrastructure products such as switches had been deliberately left out.

He also announced that Profibus sold 4.5 million devices in 2007, the biggest annual total to date, bringing the total number of Profibus devices in the field to 23 million. "Profinet numbers are now following the same growth pattern as Profibus in its early days," remarked Freitag.