The newest design revolution

Guess which country is graduating one million engineers each year? Big hint: It’s the same country whose market demand for components was $95 billion in 2006. The very same country that represents 50 percent of the total electronics spending in the world.

Yep, it’s China. For a long time the talk in the industry has been about the shift of production to China. Now, the reality is that the biggest consumer of electronics in the world is poised to design them, too.

I spoke about this new design revolution a few weeks ago as part of a “Distribution in China” panel discussion at EDS (Electronics Distribution Show) in Las Vegas. Newark’s parent company, Premier Farnell, has recently launched Premier Electronics in China to serve its rapidly growing design engineer market.

No one distributor currently dominates China’s design space, perhaps because the needs of this segment are so demanding. Next-day delivery, high customer service, product stocked in-country, a high technology product portfolio, no minimums and knowledge of China RoHS are all required. Interestingly, this high-tech market likes to use a print catalog, as well as a Web site. This fact is in line with recent research from the Hearst Electronics Group that found that 30 percent of engineers in China prefer to receive datasheets and application notes via print.

Premier Electronics has come through on all fronts with a multi-channel business model that includes a world-class Web site and catalog in Chinese, local call center, field sales team, offices and warehouses (in-country) stocked with RoHS compliant product.

As you may know, there are still many vagaries about China RoHS. My colleagues in China have just told me that the government has not yet released any new information, beyond the confirmation that Phase 2 will be pushed out to an unspecified date in 2008. Not surprisingly, I also hear that suppliers are not rushing to have their products qualified by Chinese labs until the whole process is defined.

Speaking of design engineers and RoHS, we were proud to launch Premier Farnell’s $100,000 environmental design challenge at EDS, named Live EDGE—Electronics Design for the Global Environment. Although anyone over 18 can enter anywhere in the world, Live EDGE is most likely to be embraced by design engineers. Submitted designs must utilize electronic components and significantly impact the environment. The main prize offers $50k in cash and a $50k support package to move the design toward production. This includes legal, prototyping and marketing assistance, plus the entrant retains all IP rights. Check out www.live-edge.com/info for complete details.

This blog post was contributed by Jeff Shafer, senior VP of product at Newark. At Newark, Jeff leads product management, product data, pricing and customer segment strategy, and was instrumental in developing and implementing RoHS compliance initiatives for the company, customers and suppliers.