According to recent market date released by IPC, the electronics manufacturing services (EMS) industry still has not shown signs of recovery.
EMS shipments seem to have hit the bottom in August 2009, but have remained flat through the beginning of 2010.
Orders for new computers and electronic products in the United States have shown some improvement, with a seasonal spike in January of 2010 after a decrease in December.
Printed circuit board (PCB) and semiconductor shipments continued the seasonal pattern of slow growth in January.
Several leading indicators support the view that the electronics industry is on the road to recovery.
IPC’s PCB book-to-bill ratio has been above parity (1.0) since May 2009.
The book-to-bill ratio currently stands at 1.06 as of January 2010. Its important to note the ratio leads sales in the PCB industry by an average of three to six months.
IPC views the current trend as very encouraging – a sign of expected growth in North American PCB sales in 2010.
As for the graph below, indices are based on the same baseline of the average month in 2000=100, and reflect a 3-month rolling average.
Trends in U.S. computer and electronic products new orders and North American sales indices of selected supplier industries (February 2009 – January 2010)
Sources: IPC statistical programs for the EMS and PCB industries; SIA for semiconductor data; U.S. Census Bureau for U.S. new orders for computer and electronic products.
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