Since these are all public companies, the data is about a year old - for their fiscal years 2008. There seems to be no real solution to this "old data" problem. 2009 will tell a different story.

At $87.7B the top-50 grew about 16% in 2008, compared with 17% in 2007. Growth for North America was 4.6% to $22.9B compared with 5% in 2007.

Globally, there was no significant change among the leaders and the top 6 are now: Siemens, ABB, Emerson, Rockwell, Schneider and Honeywell.

There was no change in the top-3 suppliers in the N. American market. Once again, Emerson was #1 on the list with revenues of $3.4B, up 9.6%, and extending market share slightly from 14% to 15%. In second place, Rockwell grew at nearly 11% to $2.9B with market share at 12.5%. In third place was ABB, with revenue of about $2B and minimal growth (3%), with 8.5% market-share. Clearly ABB has shifted to global focus.

In fourth place for N. America was global leader Siemens, with about 3.5% growth to $1.4B. If Siemens wants to grow they'll need to make an acquisition. Can't be Rockwell (anti-trust blockage) but perhaps Honeywell (which slipped to No. 6 (behind Danaher), or Invensys which fell out of the top-10 (now #14) with 10% Lower revenues, behind Endress & Hauser which grew 8.5% to $1.8B.

GE and Fanuc had not broken up yet in 2008, but they were ranked separately, Fanuc is No. 11 and GE No. 12, both at about $1.8B.

Globally, Siemens is still 1.5 times bigger than its nearest rival, ABB, which in turn is more than twice as big as any of the next - Mitsubishi, Emerson and Schneider, all about equal. Japanese Yokogawa is apparently faltering.

The only strategy which would enable the top few to get higher on the rankings is through merger or acquisition. 2010 will be the year of fallout.

Here are a few of my favorite mid-size companies, all growing steadily in the rankings to approach the next tier:

• National Instruments #23 at $ 800M
• Phoenix Contact #15 at $ 1,735M - more than double its competitor Weidmuller which is #24 on the list.
• Beckhoff is #41 at $406M, and #49 in N. America at $40M.
• OSIsoft got just an honorable mention on the global list, but was #35 at $90M on the N. American ranking.
• Mini-conglomerates (bag of smaller, acquired companies) - Ametek ($1.4B #17); Spectris ($1.2B #19); Roper ($680M #28).