But Professor William Webb, chief executive of the Weightless SIG, told the New Electronics Conference at last week’s Electronics Design Show that he thought the estimates could be low – in his opinion, that number could be an order of magnitude out. Stand by, he suggested, for 500bn connected devices.
At that level, he wondered whether the current structure of the electronics industry could meet the demand. Would the future, he asked, be one of products forever on allocation?
That question caught the attention of the next speaker, Mark Shanley from Astute Electronics. Allocation, he contended, will provide an ideal opportunity for counterfeiters to fill the gap between supply and demand.
He provided the audience with examples of the lengths to which counterfeiters will go, including housing a 35V 2200µF capacitor inside the case for a 6800µF device, remarking parts, hiding a 128Mbyte USB pen drive inside the housing for a 500Gbyte hard drive and even reclaiming resistors from scrap PCBs.
Discussions of counterfeiting – along with the practice itself – won’t go away. Many people believe it’s nothing to do with them, but it’s a problem that is getting ever closer to the daily business of design engineers.
The solution is a counterfeit mitigation plan – a series of processes and procedures, based on recognised industry standards and customer requirements, which provides a risk mitigation against procurement and distribution of counterfeit product.
As Shanley told the audience: “If counterfeiting isn’t taken seriously, a disaster is waiting to happen to your company.”
You have been warned.
