According to the latest market report of IMS Research, BoS equipment revenue will decline by 5% this year, and the highest revenue in 2011 will be 17 billion US dollars. Revenue from photovoltaic system (BoS) equipment inverters will increase from $17 billion in 2011 to nearly $24 billion.

Ash Sharma, Senior Research Director, commented: “The installations and shipments are “mediocre” and will undoubtedly lead to a drop in the revenue of the BoS this year, especially the inverters and brackets. However, in the long term, the market outlook is still very optimistic. The market size is expected to reach 24 billion U.S. dollars by 2016."

Although inverters will continue to occupy the largest share of the market, monitoring hardware, racks and tracking systems will catch up and market share will continue to increase.

Inverters account for more than 40% of their revenue in 2011, and the tracking system's projected revenue will grow at an annual rate of nearly 30%. Despite this, PV modules may still be the largest single hardware cost in the PV system and will account for more than 50% of total PV hardware revenue by 2016.