Majority of floor space is still reserved for circuit board assembling. Equipment manufacturers unable differentiate themselves. Attending EMS providers declining over the years.
INTERNEPCON Japan was established as a trade show dedicated exclusively for manufacturers and vendors associated with circuit board assembling. It has since evolved into one of Asia’s largest exhibition for electronics packaging, and includes SMT assembling.
Printed circuit board assembling
The lion’s share of space is still reserved for circuit board assembling products, but the industry is very fluid, and the faces continue to change. A big change this year was lack of representation from mounting machine vendors.
Last year, both foreign and domestic vendors occupied large booths; however, not many attended this year.
Yamaha and Sony were the only two companies that reserved large-sized booths to demonstrate their new mounting machines.
The featured product from Yamaha was their new SMT mounting machine. This one machine is capable to handle a wide range of components with different sizes.
Soldering
Soldering was another big topic within the circuit board assembling zone. Solder suppliers and soldering equipment vendors that included Nihon Almit, Senju Metal, Nihon Genma, Tamura, Harima Chemical, Nihon Superior and Koki secured large booths.
Unfortunately, time was tight and I did not have enough time to check out any new technologies or products from these companies; however, it was my understanding that no big breakthrough products emerged this year. Lead free soldering is already too common in the industry, and a few exhibitors promoted a soldering processes using halogen free flux. Unfortunately, there was little interest in this new process and not too many stopped by these booths to hear sales pitches.
Minor differences in equipment suppliers
Equipment suppliers for reflow soldering were touting the ease in operation of their new machines. Manufacturers tried to distance themselves from the competition by pointing out differences in their machines; however, these differences were very minor.
EMS
In the past, EMS companies reserved large booths at the show, but their numbers have been declining year over year.
The only EMS company at the show was UMC Electronics, Co., Ltd. (www.umc.co.jp/eng/company/index.html) . UMC continues to actively promote their printed circuit board and harness assembling capabilities to the Japanese electronics market.
A mid-level manager from UMC explained that his company’s popularity is not that high in the U.S. or Europe, but they have installed more than 100 circuit board assembly lines in Japan, China and Vietnam.
UMC’s technologies are not very unique, but they have a broad selection of assembling capabilities ranging from high-density SMT mounting to wire harness assembling for consumer electronics and industrial electronics. Their revenue for 2009 was over eight hundred million dollars, and the company should be listed in the top ten rankings for revenue in the near future.
Source: EPT Newsletter, VentureOutsource.com, February 2010
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