Printed Circuit Design & Fab Online Magazine - Current Issue

Current Issue

Mike Buetow

As it has many, many times before, Samsung, the world’s largest electronics company, announced in April that it is expanding.

No, that’s not exactly news, until you look where it intends to grow: Africa. And it’s going all in.

Read more: The Next China?

Mike Buetow

Well that didn’t take long.

The ink was barely dry on Bare Board Group’s purchase of Hunter Technology’s printed circuit board fabrication operations before Hunter moved to reacquire the plant. And just like that, BBG’s grand experiment as the only major regional PCB distributor to offer internal manufacturing capability was done.

Read more: Once Again, in the ‘Hunt’

Mike Buetow

Industry chatter has long said M&A activity among the major SMT placement companies is inevitable.

Yet, throughout the gut-wrenching downturn of 2001-02, the widespread pause in 2008-09, and the subsequent fallout starting last spring, nothing concrete took place.

Read more: Is there ‘Place’ for More SMT JVs?

Mike Buetow

Rapid prototyping and first-article inspection are technologies that have been around for years, but should gain significant momentum in the coming months as companies look to cut the cost of new products. It can't happen soon enough: Years ago then-Flextronics CTO Nic Braithwaite told me he calculated a large, multi-board server program could conceivably cost $50 million to ramp, once all the ECOs and respins were accounted for.