The world’s largest professional electronics trade fair is electronica. Technology Leaders TV will be there reporting from Monday November the 10th, 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 11th 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 28th, 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!
