Branded Drugs to Remain 1.3% Growth to 2015

Branded drugs are expected to slow their sales growth to a very low stage due to patent losses.

The branded pharma companies will see just 1.3 percent growth through 2015, as Datamonitor, the market research firm, expects. That's way down from the 7.1 percent annual growth rate Big Pharma enjoyed from 2003 to 2009. Reasons for this decline include top-selling drugs going off patent, the emergence of few new potential blockbusters to replace those meds, and pricing pressures.

"The difficulty in developing new products, particularly those that can generate sufficient sales to compensate for blockbuster expiries, has compounded this problem," Datamonitor's Simon King says in a statement.  But there's a silver lining for companies that can manage to fill the patent-expiration revenue gap.