A pattern is beginning to emerge in the trend in announcements of new technologies as can be seen from the following table which shows the number of news items recorded in the past three years since we started collecting the data. Despite potential vagaries in the system used to collect these announcements, the figures do tend to follow quite closely the fortunes of the paints and coatings industry in recent years: low level of activity in 2009 after the credit crunch recession which began in the fourth quarter of 2008; gradual recovery in 2010 and improvement in 2011, particularly in the first half.
In our earlier and first report analysing new technologies from the market sector point of view which came out in August, the number of announcements ran to 58 for the period January to the end of July. On that basis we thought the year as a whole might finish up with a figure close to 100. However the period from August to December was not as fruitful as anticipated and yielded just 18. This in itself is interesting as it again follows the trend in the industry where leading companies have been reporting a worsening market in particularly the fourth quarter.