Product category:
Exhibitions, Courses, Conferences and Training
News Release from: Electronica
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 24 November 2003
Productronica visitors show willingness
to invest
Organisers reckon that a "favourable star" shone over Productronica last week.
1486 exhibitors and 67 further companies from 29 countries experienced Productronica under a favourable star 62% of exhibitors and 61% of visitors expect the market to recover soon
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 4 Nov 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Electronica 2004, the world's largest and most important in event for the international electronics industry, will soon begin and is offering a web portal for visitors.
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Practically every leading electronics company will be represented at Electronica, many showing new products and applications.
The first signs are already coming from the semiconductor industry, where worldwide sales rose from $140.8 billion in 2000 to $163.0 billion this year and are expected to be worth $194.6 in 2004.
That was a view confirmed by Michael Brianda, General Manager of DEK Printing Machines: "In Europe I've been seeing a positive trend for the past three or four months; by next summer the entire industry should be reaping the benefits".
Andre Myny of Vitronics Soltec also sees positive developments: "We are happy with the number of visitors; we have lots of traffic on our stand.
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Leading UK engineering and technology firms, with a combined multi-million pound spend on training and development, will assemble at the IEE 'Investing in Technical Teams' forum on 4 November 2004.
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A UK-based workshop will give embedded software development engineers hands-on experience in running the new 5.0 release of Windows CE.NET on next generation processors.
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Abacus Polar is hosting two DSP seminars with Texas Instruments.
Business is picking up, people are looking for investment".
The exhibitors were well prepared for this economic upturn: never before have so many new products and technologies been on display at Productronica.
Visitors also showed serious interest.
"Our customers have a large number of specific projects", was the verdict of Eckhard Sperschneider, Managing Director of Macrotron Scientific Engineering.
Productronica clearly confirmed its business-to-business concept, with 99.9% trade visitors.
They were more international than at the previous event, this year coming from 87 countries.
A total of 38,000 visitors took the opportunity to learn about the latest products and systems solutions.
The increased cost awareness and restricted travel budget of most companies meant that it was almost entirely decision makers who came to Productronica 2003.
The quality of the contacts between visitors and exhibitors was correspondingly high.
Most visitors already had very specific projects in mind, and many exhibitors were able to report contracts being placed on the stand.
As Dave Wayness, Technical Marketing Manager of Shipley Europe, put it: "The fair was excellent for us - both the number and the quality of customers.
It was better than in 2001 and it exceeded our expectations.
Our contacts were mostly European, some Asian and some from the USA".
Fiona Kemp, Marketing Communications Manager of SUSS MicroTec Test Systems, agreed: "People who come to the stand have a budget to keep to.
The market is growing slowly, not booming as in the past, but perhaps the growth is all the steadier for that".
Tilo Keller, Director of Marketing Services at Ersa, was also pleased with the contacts the company made: "We're extremely happy with the number of visitors, and how international they are".
Productronica is divided into 11 main segments and occupies 11 exhibition halls.
In this way it reflects the entire added-value chain of electronics production, from circuit layout and the manufacture of circuit boards to measurement and testing for outgoing quality checks.
New this year was a separate segment for production logistics and materials flow technology.
The EMS Village, specially for electronics manufacturing services, also made its debut.
"The EMS Village got off to a good start", said Helmut Zollner, Key Account Manager of Zollner Elektronik.
"There's a clear trend toward electronics manufacturing services - driven, amongst other things, by the increasing pressure of costs.
Things are taking off".
The topic of "lead-free production" ran as a continuous thread through the entire event.
All seats at the Productronica Forum were taken when seven leading experts from manufacturing industry and research held a panel discussion on "Lead-free electronics: the consequences for EMS providers and the supply chain".
Numerous lectures in the ZVEI Podium and the Productronica Arena also took up the subject.
The industry's main future topic, microsystems technology, was comprehensively covered at Productronica by an exhibition, a user forum, and live demonstrations.
The FLIBUSI assembly line (flip-chip die bonding for ultra-thin silicon) illustrated automated production of smart labels, and proved one of the highlights of the trade fair.
Klaus Dittrich, Managing Director of MesseMunich, described himself as satisfied with the way the fair went: "The high quality of the forums and arenas was something we achieved with the support of the organisations VDMA, ZVEI, and SEMI; in this way we created a proactive platform for knowledge transfer".
But he was not so happy with the registration of visitors: "The queues at the entrance were sometimes considerable, for example on the third morning, and I'm very sorry about the delays.
We've already taken steps to see that things will be better in future".
The next Productronica will take place from 15th to 18th November 2005 at the New Munich Trade Fair Centre.
ProductronicaChina, key regional trade fair for China, takes place at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre (SNIEC) from 17th to 19th March 2004.
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