The bearing industry has not gone without rough patches though. In the past twelve years, bearing design has been subject to industry scandal and a rapidly growing counterfeit market, along with the global economic crisis in 2008.

When the market crashed it sent ripples through all industries, especially the automotive industry. The automotive industry accounts for around a quarter of international bearing sales.

Since recovering from the economic downturn, the focus for bearing technologies has come back to new innovations.

Bearings are important in almost all motion applications. This means that all of the industries using machinery or related to motor-driven linkages utilize bearings. Because of this, the current economic outlook predicts an increase in bearing use.

Professors predicted that the global bearing market will reach about $85 billion by 2020. This will happen due to a mix of industry and regional factors.

Heavy machinery and industrial sectors will have the greatest growth in the bearing sector. Therefore, the global construction market will increase immensely by 2020. Emerging markets like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar could surpass the Asia-Pacific region as being the number one growth leaders.

This is due to the fact that China does not have the same need for the level of infrastructure that it once did along with a slight economic downturn. This does not affect bearing sales though as they are to follow an upward trajectory through 2020. Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, and India are showing increased use of bearings just on a smaller scale.

Bearing technology is trending towards industry-specific solutions. So, an example of this would be aerospace and defense relying heavily on instrumented bearings. This type of bearing boots energy and provides feedback to ensure safety in systems with no margin for error.

People say that global defense spending increase for the next couple of years, which increases the demand for instrumented bearings.

In the automotive industry, vehicle manufacturing is expected to grow along with an increase in the need for instrumented bearings. Electronic stability control and anti-lock braking systems are both regulated with the assistance of the wheel speed and vibration data collected by instrumented bearings.

With the increase in car production, instrumented bearing sales should increase as well.

The growth of the bearing industry around the world is exciting. Thus, as countries continue to develop and use new technologies, bearings have a vital part in it.