Technology Leaders TV

Nov 18, 2008

Round-up of electronica 2008

Klaus Dittrich, Messe Muenchen Managing Director, opened the semiconductor CEO forum with a green theme. And there was plenty of green to be seen in the halls: bicycles and plants. LED ligh...

Nov 18, 2008

Electronica Wednesday

Paul Jackson updates us on electronica's second full day. The second full day at electonica 2008 kicked of with an analysis of the market for wireless devices in the conferences and featured a sparse...

Follow TLTV at electronica 2008

The world’s largest professional electronics trade fair is electronica. Technology Leaders TV will be there reporting from Monday November the 10^th, when the automotive conference kicks off, through the show’s opening the following day and the rest of the week.

This will be the best place online to hear and see what’s really happening, talking with the key players but without the spin.

What can we expect to see? What are the early signs about the success?

This is an event which has seen attendance grow over the past 10 years, since the move to Munich’s new trade fair centre, the Neue Messe. The organisers are talking a little cautiously this about attendance, probably hoping to beat the 75,000 that Munich MD Klaus Dittrich predicted for us a couple of months back. In these tough times with one major European airline announcing a 90% dip in first half profits, it is getting tougher to get folks to travel and there are more hotel rooms still available in Munich for Electronica than I can remember in previous years, even if the prices are still two or three times the non-show rates.

There are some interesting speakers in the conferences. The CEO panel on Tuesday 11^th pulls together an impressive list: Peter Bauer of Infineon, Rich Bayer of Freescale, Brain Halla of National Semiconductor and Carlo Bozotti of ST represent a good selection of semiconductor CEOs.

It isn’t so clear whether electronica 2008 will be a launch platform for important products. A total of just eight press releases have emerged from electronica directly over the past week. No doubt about the variety of products but no clear theme or more widely significant launches. There are twenty plus press conferences planned as well.

The burning questions for the industry at the moment are about the impact of the credit crunch on the future. There is a finance day in the conference this year. However, with topics chosen before the financial turbulence that has hit the world since September 28^th, it’s tough to see how relevant they are now. We will want to know: does Moore’s law still applies when global capital is in short supply? Will the billion dollar fabs for the next generation have to wait a while for funding?

We’ve already seen stocks hit in high capital investment industries like telecoms which account for significant demand in the electronics industry. It’s true that a next generation telco network cost at least $10bn, a little more than a fab, but not that much more.

So we’ll be taking the opportunity to ask questions about this topic to the CEOs this week rather than reporting on the next product tweaks. It’s going to be interesting!

Supply chain must be in place for manufacturing boom in India

The supply chain must be in place first for India’s electronic manufacturing to boom, Siemen’s Jack Chua told Technology Leaders TV at the electronicIndia 2008 show. Chua, the company’s Vice President for South East Asia said, “This is going to be a very attractive market. They are importing a lot at this time.”

See the interview with Jack Chua in our Techology section technology-leaders.tv/Videos.aspx.

Trade shows grow

Do trade shows have a future?

Like Mark Twain and, more recently Steve Jobs, predictions of the death of the trade show have proved to be exaggerated. We have just come back from two in the technology sector, electronicIndia in Bangalore and the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam, both of which looked busy.

The theory goes like this; travel is expensive and people are busy so we can all meet by email. Of course, the flaw in this argument is that humans like to meet and talk about their common interests whether it’s at an industry event, around the office water cooler or in a sports field. But, there has been pressure on numbers at many events in recent years and some pretty spectacular flops, perhaps because organisers have lost the plot or the audience has simply moved on.

So what happened at IBC and electronicIndia? Well, there’s lots of coverage for electronicIndia on the site so you can judge for yourself. The organisers have put the numbers at just under 17,000, wandering around 446 booths across 16,000square metres. The usual guess that 1 visitor per square metre of trade show place leads to contented exhibitors seems to fit here. Amazing that the show successfully ran across an important festival day in the area with businesses across the four closest Indian states closed for the day. Now that just wouldn’t happen in Europe. Different solutions for different markets.

And what of IBC? It was busy and, by the way, runs across a weekend. The organisers have posted 49,250 for the visitor number, an impressive increase on previous years. Why is that? The broadcasting industry is changing. Software now dominates, high definition has become widely available and the barriers to entry in the TV world have been dropping dramatically with the changes. Delivery to mobile platforms and over different media is becoming easier and more people want to see what’s going on than ever before.

So the bottom line is that folks still travel, still attend, if there are compelling reasons, whether a changing industry landscape or a rapidly growing market. However, for every two successful shows, growing attendance with the right market proposition we could probably name a dozen or more that are heading South. We won't mention them just yet, to be sure that we avoid any more exaggeration. Click here to listen and watch.

Photographs courtesy of IBC