It has been an uncertain year, especially over the last six months. The continuing concerns over the fate of the Euro has seemed to keep most of the economy pretty flat.
In the EMS market things seem to be be pretty stable. This was my conclusion after updating company information for our annual EMS survey. In fact, some companies seem to be doing rather well adding new services and staff according to the survey, which appears in December's EM&T. The conclusion was also backed up by information that I received from SILPACE recently.
According to the SIPLACE's market analyses the global demand for SMT placement equipment continued to be stable on this autumn. The global SMT equipment market remained on the high level of the previous year towards the end of 2011. What changed, however, were the regional distributions. For example, in China, which is the world’s largest SMT market, order numbers declined for the fourth month in a row. New order bookings in October were less than one-third of the total order bookings registered in June of this year. Since China accounts for almost half of the global market, this drop slowed down the overall market’s momentum from this spring considerably.
Fortunately, the remaining regions were able to more than compensate for this weak spot. According to SIPLACE’s calculations, the global SMT market grew by over 20 percent. Other special effects were caused by the heavy rainfalls in Thailand and neighboring countries, which flooded or destroyed many plants of international producers or their local manufacturing partners. Due to the investments required to compensate for these losses, growth rates in the region climbed to over 170 percent. North and South America also reported strong growth of almost 40 percent, and the European SMT market was stable on a high level.