'Solutions' dominated electronica, not technology itself

electronica has always been viewed as a German show with a reasonable international attendance. But the figures released by the organisers showed there were as many international visitors this year as there were from Germany - and the UK was the third largest international group, behind Italy and Austria. Two themes dominated the event: the Internet of Things (IoT); and 'solutions'. The IoT was the topic for this year's CEO Roundtable. Picking up on emerging themes, the CEOs - from NXP, Freescale, STMicroelectronics and Infineon - called for secure, scalable and energy efficient products to enable the IoT to develop further. Many leading semiconductor companies and distributors were talking about 'solutions'. What are they? Anything from evaluation boards and reference designs to preconfigured circuit elements. Why are they appearing? Two main reasons: one is that engineers don't have enough time to start designs from scratch; the other is that a 'resource gap' is emerging - companies don't have the necessary skills in house. Most 'solutions' were, in fact, only partial; other elements need to be brought together to create a product. But if a company, for example, didn't have the analogue expertise, these ideas would certainly take the project forward. Well, that's it for another two years. What might the focus be for the 2016 event? Electronics technology might not be moving forward quite as quickly as it once did, but the pace of product innovation hasn't slowed - it's the applications that now capture our imagination, rather than the 'bits and pieces' inside the box. What might those new applications be? Gregg Lowe, Freescale's CEO, ended his contribution to the CEO Roundtable by saying: "When we come back in two years, we'll be talking about something we don't know about today."