ELECTRONICS, MEASUREMENT & INSTRUMENTATION
Eye on the Future: The Impact of Technology
GIL 2011: Silicon Valley began with a hockey analogy from
Frost & Sullivan Chairman David Frigstad. In
his
keynote address, Frigstad warned participants to “focus on where the puck will be, not where it is right now;” suggesting that the most successful hockey players think a few moves ahead, anticipate where the puck is going and position themselves accordingly. He encouraged executives to think about the future of their industries and where they expect the demand to be in five to ten years from now, rather than focusing on where their business is coming from at present.
This theme was echoed in track sessions throughout the day.
The Electronics, Measurement & Instrumentation (EMI) track was created to give companies across disciplines—Test & Measurement, Sensors, Semiconductors, Auto-ID, Surface Mount Technology and Electronic Devices—a platform to convene, discuss, interact and review the current and future state of their industries, technologies and the changing faces of their customers.
While focused on their respective industries, participants universally acknowledged some of the key mega trends expected in the next ten years. Most notably, the corporate entities that have dominated for the past
50 years will no longer be the front runners of high growth and success. For the last five years, nearly 70 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies have been brand new companies, affording everyone in the room—big and small companies alike—an equal chance to make the list, if they play their cards right.
The track began with my 360 Overview of the EMI industry; while participants found the current market size and characteristics reasonably interesting, what really caught their attention were the mega trends that directly and indirectly impacted their industries and companies. With a focus on what they need to do to take advantage of available and future opportunities, this session was designed to help executives identify areas they need to work on within their organizations to be in the forefront of this changing environment, and to realize the tremendous growth opportunities by being in the right place at the right time.
The first Growth Success Story of the afternoon was presented by Paul Bromley, Vice President, Strategic Marketing at STMicroelectronics, on his company’s recent success with the development and promotion of MEMS technologies in its new products. He focused on how STMicroelectronics used a clear process of innovation in an increasingly maturing market to change the future of its sensor business. Infusion of MEMS technology into the maturing semiconductor markets, according to Bromley, has given his company a new array of business opportunities in the ever-evolving consumer market. Far from the days of hard IT-related applications, the company is now focused on new applications for its products in societal needs and personal networking, catering to the medical, energy and security markets. Participants came away from Bromley’s session with some key insights: invest in a few innovation-driven engineers instead of a large team, reuse/recycle old labs, identify high growth and high margin opportunities, and never underestimate the importance of technical marketing and go-to-market strategies. Sensor fusion technology (iNEMO) has allowed the company to focus on new applications such as remote health monitoring, emergency response, ophthalmology and more. These innovations have enabled the company to garner between 30 to 40 percent of the market share, a clear success story.
In a panel session on the trends expected to impact their respective businesses over the next ten years, panelists discussed what measures their organizations are taking to seize the opportunities that such trends will afford them. Steve Tsui, Vice President of Worldwide Sales Systems Business acknowledged Bromley’s success and the growing adoption of MEMS in previously unheard of applications. He offered, as examples, the fact that over a billion smart phones have been shipped worldwide in the last five years, and location-based services are expected to be the next killer application. In his entreaty to take MEMS seriously, Tsui emphasized that MEMS and sensors will eventually become commoditized and will be countered by combined sensors. He also forewarned that those hardware companies not planning for acquisitions will not grow organically.
David Cheskis, Senior Manager of Product Marketing at Anadigics, also gave weight to this trend when he disclosed that although his company uses gallium arsenide instead of silicon in its chips, the trends are no different from those mentioned by Tsui. Cheskis
extolled the future of wired technologies and opportunities from cable TV
subscribers as an example. With more than 200 million subscribers in China and several million more across the globe, the need as well as opportunities that wired technologies offer should not be ignored. Cheskis also acknowledged that the demand for all EMI products and services in wireless technologies is expected to grow exponentially in the next ten years.
Rahul Bammi, Senior Director, Corporate Business Development at KLA-Tencor Corporation, presented on the importance of looking for adjacent market opportunities. As a company, KLA-Tencor offers multi-million dollar manufacturing equipment to the semiconductor industry. With the increasing number of consolidations among their customers, the company was compelled to look at other, more lucrative areas and sources of revenue. Now branching into photovoltaics and LEDs, Bammi emphasized the need to look at new avenues in the wireless arena and technologies such as Bluetooth, WiMax, GPS and LTE. With most instrumentation becoming increasingly software-defined, he was especially attuned to keeping track of the WiGig consortium and their efforts to get to
Wifi at 60 gbs in the near future.
Another key strategy that companies should focus on, according to C J Meurell, Vice President Americas Sales at Aeroflex, is to create an ecosystem of strategic channel partners to ensure future growth of business. He discussed the creation of vendor programs where members are encouraged to use Aeroflex’s testing solutions in the design stage to facilitate recommendation for use in manufacturing later on. This created a clear path of demand for the company not only in the technology-critical R&D stage but also in the higher volume and higher margin manufacturing stage as well.
On a different note, Brad Neiman, Principal at NeiMan Technical Services, discussed the differences and similarities in the strategies of a multi-billion dollar MEMS sensor division at GE Sensing versus a start-up technical consulting firm. In both cases, he emphasized the need to maintain and protect IP as well as demonstrate appreciation for the respective innovation teams.
The last session of the track was an apt conclusion—a case study on the successful adoption of advanced temperature sensing technologies in a winery. For all the innovators, strategy planners and business development managers in the room, Mark Holst, Vice President of Quality at Cypress Semiconductor Corp., provided a compelling look into a unique installation of technology. In his example, the traditional wooden wine barrel wine fermentor was converted to a cluster of network appliances (150 fermentors) by adopting the right technology. Hoist detailed the growth of the $17 billion dollar wine making industry realized by utilizing the latest in programmable system-on-chip (PSoC) and wireless technologies provided by Cypress Semiconductor. He emphasized how the adoption of the right technologies—to facilitate instrumentation, measurement and control of traditional process parameters—can enable and enhance traditional approaches. The key take away from this session was that opportunities exist to revitalize and enable traditional multi-billion dollar businesses via new technologies.
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