I find myself in an aircraft again, with no internet access, so I can’t do much about all the articles I need to get edited and written, so I thought I’d write my editorial. This is one of those weeks when the front page story is not obvious.
I’ve spent the week in the Netherlands and Germany, including giving a talk at the Electronic Display conference in Nuremberg, a venue I have spoken at on a number of occasions over the years, sometimes on the European business and opportunities and sometimes on the ‘big picture’ perspective. The conference is mainly of engineers and scientists and there is usually a lot of good content. I was disappointed that the keynote session I was speaking in was away from the other analyst talks, as I always learn from them.
I got around the Embedded World exhibition and there was a real buzz about the place. The IoT is coming into shape and lots of those that have been working in the area for a long time (after all, embedded systems in, for example, factories and automotive applications are really the early markets of a kind of IoT approach). I would have liked more time to just ‘follow my nose’ and chat to people making the systems driving the displays to get a sense of what was going on, but I had to be brutal and really ‘cherry pick’ the people I spoke to, as I had only limited time. Still, I found some interesting stories that I will get written up for next week’s issues. There were a lot of companies there that I might have had time for, but couldn’t talk to.
A couple of years ago, most of the (many) companies offering value-added display services such as adding touch, optical bonding or brighter backlights came from Korea or Taiwan. Not any more. Now, most of them come from China and that really chimes with the Display Daily I wrote this week on the subject of China. At the shows that I have attended this year, such as MWC, ISE and, now, Embedded World, the increased Chinese presence is tangible. Companies that have built up strong bases in their home markets are now heading to Europe and America to look for more expansion opportunities.
On the one hand, it’s refreshing and interesting. However, as press, it’s really hard. Many or most of the companies have little or no concept of marketing, as we know it in the West, although they often have a strong grasp of sales! Some years ago, going around the smaller companies at CeBIT, which were then mostly from Taiwan, I would ask them about their products. The reaction was often ‘How many do you want to buy?’. When I started to explain that I didn’t buy them, I just wrote about them, I got some very strange responses, with ‘No, thank you!’ a common response.
Eventually, I realised that what I had to tell them was that I collected information about them to sell to people who were interested. That seemed to be the solution, and I realised that the problem was that they saw everyone as either a buyer or seller, with no other options. If they couldn’t classify you as a buyer, you must be a seller, so that’s why I got ‘No thank you’!
I had to help them to understand that the people I was selling to were not them. (Of course, we would have been happy to sell to them, but given that they didn’t understand how marketing worked in the West, there was little chance that they would understand the value of information, analysis or market research!)
Another approach was defined by my good friend, Jon Peddie, who tracks graphics boards and was also at the same shows. “I just don’t care about their crappy stuff!”, or words to that effect, was his policy. I think his approach was probably more efficient!
Bob
