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Profile of the Pharmaceutical Industry Essay

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Industry Profile
Name: Pharmaceutical preparation
SIC: 2834
Industry Description
The pharmaceutical industry, one of the most profitable industries in the world, develops, manufactures, and markets drugs or pharmaceutical products. The world pharmaceutical manufacturing industry generates over $950 billion in revenue on average with growth rate of about 4%, and expected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2014. Industry revenue will grow as a result of the world's aging population boosting healthcare demand, and of increased access to more comprehensive healthcare in emerging economies.
In particular, the US pharmaceutical manufacturing and preparation industry contains around 1,500 companies, and accounts for over one-third of the global …show more content…

Key current trends
The pharmaceutical industry is, and has been for years, one of the most profitable industries in the world. Currently, though, it is mainly growing by trimming costs, devising more efficient methods for research and development and completing mergers and acquisitions. The industry relies on advances in medical technology to develop new products that address unmet needs; however, the pace of development has slowed considerably while the costs have risen dramatically. The development of blockbuster drugs has been slowing, making it difficult for research-intensive pharmaceutical companies to recoup R&D costs via revenue from multibillion-dollar products as in the past. Consequently, R&D focus is shifting to less-lucrative products or those that occupy niche product segments. As an increasing number of key products lose patent protection, enterprises face heightened competitive pressures from generic drugs.
Maturity of the industry
The pharmaceutical industry has a relatively long life cycle (about 45 to 50 years) and is currently in the mature stage of its life cycle. Its contribution to GDP is forecasted to grow 1.7% per year on average, compared with global GDP growth of 5.4% per year on average. Further, the merge and acquisition activity has been prevalent over the past decade, so the number of companies is expected to remain

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