The Modicon brand disappeared
“Modicon, one of Schneider’s four major brands, has stopped research and development,” the reporter told an employee inside Schneider.
Modicon is a famous PLC brand of Schneider Company. Although ordinary people are very strange to PLC products, but it is the core products in the field of industrial automation, is the industry image compared to do “CPU in the computer”, widely used in the subway, power plant, tunnel and industrial production line and other fields.
On the company’s Chinese website, the page still displays the ‘Big Four’ brands, but clicking through shows only descriptions of the other three brands. Schneider, according to reliable sources, has been slowly scaling back the Modicon brand and ramping up marketing for its alternative TE brand.
All signs seem to indicate that Modicon, a well-known brand in the industrial automation field that has enjoyed a reputation for nearly 40 years and once brought huge profits to Schneider Company, will gradually withdraw from the market. If the news is true, then the industrial automation field in China and even the world will face a reshuffle.
In the field of mid – and high-end industrial automation, there has always been a “Big four”, that is to say, Siemens, Rockwell, Schneider, General Electric almost carved up this market, but there are almost no brands of their own in mainland China. Modicon was incorporated into Schneider in 1997 as a local company in the United States. Its PLC Quantum has been highly competitive in the market and enjoys a high reputation in the industry. Even the professional technicians of its competitor Rockwell Company have to admit that it is “really a very good product”.
As for the strategic adjustment, Mr. Duan, Marketing Manager of Schneider Greater China, explained it this way: Schneider has always had two brands producing PLC and related industrial control products, such as Premium of TE Company and Quantum of Modicon Company. This situation tends to give customers the illusion of disordered internal brand management, which is not conducive to the publicity of the product’s market image. Therefore, from the perspective of the company’s long-term development, It was decided to rename the original Modicon products as TE in the brand. As for the product performance, technical content, and even the production line and employees, there were no changes. Such product integration is conducive to making customers feel the unity of the brand image.
And Doan admits that Modicon, which was based in the United States, now plans to move its factory to Schneider’s home country, France.
But peer market players have another view of this behavior. One of the company’s eastern China product managers likened Modicon to Schneider’s “stepmother’s child” because of its history of changing ownership and eventually being sold to Schneider’s AEG. Perhaps because of cultural differences, although the company has done well under Schneider’s ownership, it has not been as coddled as the other three. This leads one to wonder if Modicon is simply a victim of Schneider’s long-term strategy, and if there is a bigger profit behind the company’s decision to risk losing its own land.
However, Mr. Jin, the sales manager of another product in the Southern region, thinks that although Modicon products sell well in the market, the profit margin is not very big. Modicon is an American company, and American people put profit first, which may be the main reason for its conversion. In addition, this man also speculated that there may have been a high-level management problem within Schneider.