Nam Tai in late January announced it would exit the electronics manufacturing services business following the wind down of orders for LCMs at its Shenzhen facility.
Quick, how many persons active in the SMT industry today have managed a major equipment supplier, a major materials supplier and an EMS company? Not many, we’re guessing. Indeed, Pat Trippel may be the only one, and even then, he’s not directly in charge of the latter.
In the quiet of the post-Christmas vacation break Kent Alder officially retired as CEO of TTM.
Over the years, I’ve written about what I call the Apple Effect, or what will be the inevitable mass copying of Apple by the OEMs it has left in its financial wake. When your competitor’s margins are typically in the 40% range, give or take a couple points, and yours are, well, below 0%, it does make sense to study what they are doing right and emulate where you can.