The research-based pharmaceutical industry is one of the most technically complex of all, and naturally places itself in a small group of industries referred to as high technology, or “high-tech”, industries.
Other sectors that compare to the pharmaceutical sector are (apart from its related industry sectors medical and dental equipment), aerospace as well as manufacturers of motor vehicles and computers, and equipment for communications. These industries are sometimes compared to one another in terms of research and development (R&D) or capital expenditure but there is no specific class of technology that is “high-tech”. Often the term is used as a broad definition of science-based industries with a long and costly development phase before the manufactured product can reach its users.
Medical progress
Medical progress has turned fundamental research into innovative treatments that became widely available and accessible to patients. Since early medical research achievements (such as polio vaccines), the pharmaceutical industry has been able to target increasingly complex ill-health conditions.
Many of the pharmaceutical corporations operating on the global market today were established around the same time as the early achievements of modern medicine, and have developed alongside the various breakthroughs of modern medical science.
The table below shows the top 10–20 pharmaceutical corporations operating on the global market. "Nationality" of a corporation indicates the country where it is headquartered, "growth" indicates the annual average growth from the previous year (ie. from 2008), and "market share" is given as percentage of the global market.Figure 1 – Top world pharmaceutical corporations, 2009
| 1 | Pfizer | USA | -3% | 7.64% |
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| 2 | Merck & Co | USA | -1% | 5.22% |
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| 3 | Novartis | CH | 5% | 5.15% |
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| 4 | sanofi-aventis | F | -3% | 4.75% |
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| 5 | GlaxoSmithKline | GB | -5% | 4.69% |
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| 6 | Astrazeneca | GB | 6% | 4.61% |
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| 7 | Roche | CH | 8% | 4.38% |
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| 8 | Johnson & Johnson | USA | -10% | 3.59% |
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| 9 | Lilly | USA | 7% | 2.71% |
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| 10 | Abbott | USA | 2% | 2.66% |
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| ∑ | Leading 10 corporations | | 0% | 45.40% |
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| 11 | Teva | ISR | 5% | 2.14% |
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| 12 | Bayer Schering Pharma | D | -1% | 2.11% |
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| 13 | Boehringer Ingelheim | D | 8% | 2.05% |
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| 14 | Amgen | USA | -2% | 2.01% |
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| 15 | Takeda | J | 4% | 1.92%
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Friday, April 06, 2012
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