Electronica – life is still out there!
18 November 2008
I went, I saw, I got sore feet. More importantly, I got a refreshing reminder of an industry that is far from in the doldrums.
The aisles were packed from when the doors opened in the morning to when the last reluctant visitor was shooed away long after the darkness had fallen. Electronica is nothing like a UK exhibition – people are there not just because they want to be but because they feel they HAVE to be. There is no arriving after the morning rush hour, then have a spot of lunch, before going early to beat the evening traffic in Munich. It seems every moment is an opportunity not to be missed at Electronica. Consequently the cavernous halls are mostly pretty busy and some of them, particularly those dedicated to semiconductors, were absolutely packed.
So does this say anything positive about the industry? Certainly from a European perspective it does. An American I met over there admitted that had he known what was going to happen in the global economy then he would not have booked exhibition space for his company – but he did book, couldn’t cancel and he confessed to being delighted that he was not able to. Similarly others speculated that flights and hotels may have been booked in advance and were not fully ‘cancellable’ – so people exhibited and visited based on decisions made several months ago.
This unquestionably has an element of truth behind it, but it is far from being the whole story. It does not explain away the fact that most visitors are from Central Europe and will have either driven to Munich or taken short haul and small budget options to get there. The organisers of the show have not released final exhibitor and visitor figures yet, and I am told they are likely to be slightly down on 2006, but there is no question that the show was very full of people who wanted to be there.
While a good sign for Germany and surrounding countries, is this necessarily a good indicator for the UK? I think it has to be. Let us not forget that Germany and the rest of the Eurozone officially went into recession last week, so we are not alone! If there is life in the electronics industry in Central Europe, and Electronica last week suggests that its heartbeat is as strong as ever, then we can feel suitably buoyed as a consequence. I am never sure if this is just my ears picking up familiar accents, but I am sure that I heard a disproportionately large number of British voices while I was there, but a more scientific assessment of this will come from the organisers in due course.
As for the trends and products, this is always a difficult one to judge. Even if we on the EPD team strive to see one company every half hour (a tall order considering the size of the exhibition complex and resulting distances involved), then we can still only scratch the surface of the 3000 or so exhibitors at Electronica. Across all of the companies that I visited I would say that as far as the products are concerned there continues to be the drive towards lower power and energy efficiency while corporately, suppliers are under increasing pressure to find new ways of getting information and products to their customers in faster, cheaper and more convenient ways. I will endeavour to filter all the information we gleaned at Electronica through this newsletter and EPD magazine in coming issues.
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