Seems that Siemens is gaining strength in America, mainly because of price.
Not from my experience. AB is still the preferred PLC choice for all of our customers. It's also the preferred choice from other integrators that I talk to.
Now, HMI is different. I'm seeing Indusoft and Ignition the front runners. Most of our customers hate FT, as do I.
Our company had the policy to use only AB, but in recent years and after getting clients like BMW, they decided to go on "cheaptest with quality", as they found Siemens was same as good as AB with a 30% less cost. Integrators in USA are not willingly moving or being flexible, and that may be one of the main reasons most of the 2 millions investment on machines went to Europe integrators. So far good quality machines, but programs sometimes are hard to understand (even they have "English comments", Siemens is new to me) mostly some have a high level of programming and mixing two or three different programming languages, we will find out in the long term I guess. And this is only a couple of new lines. A whole new plant in Indianna will have also mostly Siemens, again, much of the equipment is being developed in Europe, same reasons.
Some of our integrators in US do work with Siemens, and when we visit their facilities they have other machines being developed for other clients, some AB some Siemens. That is why I see a new trend. A couple years before this was very rare to see.
I had been running tests with a Siemens PLC demo with LibNoDave and Modbus. It works, but not at the level I like as AHMI does. I just discovered Snap7, will give it a try. I have a special project where I will have to add a Siemens PLC in a database application that already communicates with five AB PLCs, so AHMI+Modbus have been my choice so far. Not the best because Modbus limitations, but still usable. I will be very happy when Archie gets the opportunity to develop a Profinet driver, and will be glad to test it and try to help if I can.
All I can say is thanks Archie for sharing your hard work, there is no way we all can thank you enough. I am glad to tell I have "followed" you during some years, still cannot believe how you manage to have time to do all the stuff you do.
