Industrial and Medical Electronics Trends

Innovation and cost savings are now the key growth drivers for industrial companies worldwide.  Introducing more and more electronics and intelligence into their products is mandatory to survive.
As a result, the global industrial and medical electronics production will start a new growth cycle, which is forecast to reach 6.5% in average over the period 2012-2017.

Demand today is outweighed by major energy concerns. This modifies the expected technological road-map and the renewal demand routines. A growing part of the market will turn towards smart energy saving systems.

Industrial and medical electronics can be divided into the following 5 segments.

1. Transportation: electronics equipment for railways, marine and off-road vehicles applications, (excluding automotive electronics, aerospace, and defense systems).

2. Power electronics: includes UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), labs and industrial power supplies, solar inverters, and power distribution networks as a first segment, solar panels and electronic lighting as two other ones.

3. Automation: control equipment for factory and utility automation on one hand, and building and home automation for the second one.

4. Medical electronics: imaging systems, implants, other diagnosis and therapy equipment.

5. Instrumentation, measuring and test equipment: Automatic Test Equipment (ATE), general instrumentation, telecommunications instrumentation, metering.

Industrial electronic equipment production breakdown by segments in 2017:

Read the full article at http://www.ttiinc.com/object/me-coulon-20140626.html

Source: DECISION (Extract from the World Electronic Industries 2012 – 2017 Forecast report)

Slow Growth for the North American PCB Industry

IPC - Association Connecting Electronics Industries announced the April findings from its monthly North American Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Statistical Program.

Sales and Orders Slow but Improving

Total North American PCB shipments increased 1.6 percent in April 2014 from April 2013, which moved year-to-date shipment growth to -0.2 percent. Compared to the previous month, PCB shipments declined 12.0 percent.

PCB bookings strengthened but continued negative at -1.5 percent year over year. Year-to-date order growth, while still negative, improved to -5.6 percent. Order growth fell 8.1 percent from the previous month.

The North American PCB book-to-bill ratio held steady in April at 1.01.

Read the article at http://www.ipc.org/ContentPage.aspx?Pageid=IPC-Releases-PCB-Industry-Results-for-April-2014