The Representor - Fall 2007
Marketing Group Digest
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
by Mike Pecar, CPMR
As I write this article, I am recovering in the comfort of my home from a complete knee replacement. I'm coming along very nicely, and I attribute my progress to a skillful surgeon, a compassionate medical team (both, undoubtedly, aided by sophisticated medical electronics!), and the unwavering support and continuous encouragement of my dear wife, Maryellen, and our family and friends.
CEDIA EXPO 2007 was held at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver on Sept. 5-9 for the second time in a three-year run. Attendance was reported to top 29,000, up about 4 percent from 2006 (which was good enough to rank the 2006 Expo as the 70th largest trade show and the world's No. 1 residential electronics systems industry show). Don St. Peters, Jr., of Indiana was presented with the CEDIA 2007 Rep of the Year Award. CEDIA EXPO 2008 will once again be held at the Colorado Convention Center on Sept. 2-7.
While the CEDIA EXPO is held every September and continues to be the "main event," CEDIA is launching a second show, Spring EXPO 2008, which will be held April 29 through May 2 in Dallas, Tex. This new event is designed to complement, but not replace, the annual September Expo. More information is available at www.cedia.org.
An organization that ERA has worked very closely with for many years is IPRO (Independent Professional Representatives Organization). IPRO and CEDIA co-sponsored a sales rep reception at CEDIA EXPO 2007 that attracted well in excess of 100 representatives. IPRO Executive Director Ray Wright presented Paul Fitzpatrick of Northern California with the group's 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award at the reception, where Fitzpatrick received a well-deserved standing ovation. The 17th Annual IPRO Conference will be held Nov. 1-4 at Loews Vanderbilt Hotel in Nashville, Tenn. ERA CEO Tom Shanahan will be an active participant in the program. More information is available at www.avreps.org.
The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) celebrates its 41st anniversary on Jan. 7-10, 2008, in Las Vegas. CES 2008 will have an expected attendance of 150,000, visiting the more than 2,700 exhibitors arranged into nine TechZones. The TechZones highlight areas of particular interest and help make such a large show easier for attendees to navigate. The TechZones are: Audio; Digital Imaging; Emerging Technologies; Gaming; High-Performance Audio and Home Theater; Home Networking; Home Theater and Video; In-Vehicle Technology; and Wireless. The show uses every bit of the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Hilton Convention Center, the Sands Convention Center, the Venetian Hotel and countless other off-site locations. More information is available at www.cesweb.org.
The Spring and Fall Electronic House Expos (EHX) are the fastest growing trade shows in the custom electronics industry. EHX Fall 2007 will be held at the Long Beach Convention Center in Long Beach, Calif., on Nov. 6-9, with the trade show running Nov. 7-9. The fall event will host more than 300 exhibitors and is expected to welcome 10,000 electronics industry professionals. EHX Spring 2008 will be held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., on March 11-15, with the trade show running March 13-15. More information is available at www.ehxweb.com.
PARA (Professional Audio-Video Retailers Association) will host its annual conference in Orlando, Fla., on March 12-14, 2008. As these dates occur right in the middle of those for Spring EHX, this will provide attendees with the opportunity to participate in two great events in one trip. PARA Executive Director Kerry Moyer can be reached via e-mail at kmoyer@ce.org for more information.
MERA (Mobile Enhancement Retailers Association) will conduct the 2008 MERA KnowledgeFest at the Kentucky International Convention Center in Louisville, Ky., on March 15-17. The KnowledgeFest has become the vital event for those involved in the installation of mobile sound and a growing number of other electronic enhancements in all types of vehicles. More information can be found at www.merausa.org.
Depending on the segment of the Consumers Electronics industry you work in, these can all be very important shows and events in which to be involved.
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INSTRUMENTATION, AUTOMATION & CONTROLS
Tom Diercksmeier, CPMR
The Department of Defense (DOD) is proposing a budget of slightly more than $28.1 billion for fiscal year 2008 (which begins Oct. 1, 2007). This money will fund procurement and research in communications, electronics, telecommunication and intelligence technologies (CET&I). This is about a 4 percent decrease from the 2007 budget. Avionics, vetronics and missile guidance are not included in the above figure. If they are added, the budget number jumps close to $60 billion.
DOD leaders are also asking for $481.4 billion in discretionary spending, which would be a 12.7 percent increase over 2007 appropriations. This money is to be used for military personnel, military construction and family housing. So, the money request of CET&I is roughly 15 percent of the total DOD budget.
With new emissions regulations about to take place, many power generation stations, oil refineries and other heavy industrial plants are adding instrumentation to monitor and control stack emissions. These sensors are added to existing supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems via industrial ethernet protocols. Also, many large manufacturing plants are updating their instrumentation to increase plant efficiency.
Water and wastewater plants are expanding in many parts of the country to accommodate the local increases in population. Flow meters, pressure transmitters and gas detectors are some of the instrumentation that is being added to these growing plants.
A new technology is emerging for monitoring the condition of bearings in large rotating machinery like pumps and generators. It is called airborne/structure-borne ultrasound. Most ultrasound instruments are lightweight and portable. They translate high-frequency sounds produced by bearings down to the audible range, so they can be listened to with headphones and viewed as intensity levels (usually decibels) on a display panel. Digital instruments record test data, while some instruments have onboard sound recording and data logging capability. The ability to view sound levels while simultaneously listening to sound quality enhances the inspection effectiveness. Inspectors can quickly identify changes in bearing condition that occur from increases in decibel levels or by changes in sound quality as they collect data along their routes.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to call me at 602-329-2147, or e-mail me at tomd@vicmyers.com.
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MATERIALS, ASSEMBLY, PRODUCTION & SUPPLY
Troy Gunnin
Where has 2007 gone? By the time you read this, we will be in the last quarter of the year - time to reflect on what we have (or have not) accomplished in our "grand plan" for 2007. In some instances, we will be scrambling to try to capture sales that will help us meet, exceed or at least get close to those forecasts that we made with great anticipation for 2007. I suspect that all of us have found that, in some cases, we looked like prophets in our forecasts, and in other cases, "What could we have been thinking?" That happens every year. It just goes to show that the economy and customers do not always envision things as we do.
This has been a year of mixed blessings. Any of you who are involved with anything that has lead in it are aware of the problems we are encountering with that commodity. Some of you may remember things like "gold adder," "silver adder," "copper adder," "price in effect at time of shipment." Well, we are almost at that point with lead. We are seeing factories issue weekly price lists, lead escalators and other variations of dealing with an insane lead market in China. Couple that with the looming possibility of lead shortages, and that makes for a real fun time. ... NOT!
Why, you say, since we are going "lead free," is that such a problem? In the real world, there is still huge lead usage. How about the battery in your car, boat, motorcycle, etc.? How about the batteries in the UPS system in the office and myriad other products in which we use lead-acid batteries? There is still a lot of lead solder used. The bottom line is that lead prices have gone up 95 percent since January. Now, on to the bright side of that. Higher prices mean larger sales (assuming we keep the business), and larger sales translate into more commission dollars. What we may see from this is also a "rethinking" of some situations that may result in additional moves in manufacturing and marketing.
We are still seeing "consolidations" (read: factory closings), sales, mergers and other realignments taking place in the industry. We are also seeing growth in some areas and even some start-ups.
In general, it appears that, for most of 2007, it was an OK year. It was not a record by any stretch, but overall, pretty good. What about the fourth quarter? Depends on whom you are speaking to or what column you are reading in the business news. From here, it looks like it will be pretty much like the rest of 2007.
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RF/MICROWAVE & WIRELESS
Mike Harris
As this will be my first column in The Representor, I will attempt to follow the pattern of previous writers: What is hot, what is not, and what to expect over the next half-year or so. However, the reader will already know that, if any of us could accurately predict the trends of the next year, we would be out there, looking for new lines and working harder with the promising lines that we'd already have.
Fiber optic communication systems are not that much different in application than microwave communication systems. The hardware is different, of course, but many of the application theories and terminologies are similar. In microwave, you have waveguide, co-ax cables and open-air, point-to-point communications. While with fiber optics, you have light guides and some point-to-point communications. The difference between them is that there is a much broader bandwidth for systems using fiber optic components than is possible with RF/microwave.
Now that fiber optics have been around for a while, much of the "black magic" associated with it is behind us. About six or seven years ago, the biggest thing in fiber optic communication systems was ever-increasing signal density and smaller separations among data streams. With the improvements in various glass light guide manufacturing techniques, the user could look forward to being able to put more information into and getting more out of a single strand of glass. This is somewhat equivalent to putting a 12-inch water main into every office or home when a three-quarter-inch pipe would do just fine.
Technology and capabilities far outstripped market needs and the market crashed - pretty badly. I personally know of high-performance test systems (OC-768/40 GB data rate) being sold off at a ratio of 10 cents to the dollar, original cost. Things have settled down to what the market demands: better use of existing systems. Agile networks, reconfigurable systems, bandwidth on demand - a healthy urgency for innovation is out there. Companies that are building in more network flexibility will win the greater share of the business.
On the RF/microwave side of things, innovation is also the rule of the day. Seems everything is going wireless: Bluetooth and WiFi are both heavily in use; ZigBee is also developing nicely. Many new devices are being developed that are (nearly) complete systems-on-a-chip (SOC). Generally, the only items not included in SOC devices are a frequency control device and some source of power. Now, with the capability of adding a VCO into the circuitry, a source of power may be all that is needed to make a complex transceiver work at microwave frequencies up to 2400 MHz and above. The ZigBee protocol (Mesh Network) can have up to 256,000 nodes, allowing multiple connect points. Practically unlimited remote sensing capabilities, remote control and voice/data communication come to mind. I am starting to hear more about microwave frequency machine-to-machine (M2M) communication systems. The Jetsons aren't coming - they're already here.
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2007 Electronics Representatives Association (ERA), Chicago, IL 60611
Originally printed in the Fall 2007 issue of The Representor
Cannot be reprinted without the permission of the Electronics Representatives Association (ERA) |
