August 2008

Digital editions. Freeze that cynical smile a moment. They do have a use and they do increase readership. Now, I know marketing folk who just discount the digital circulation of publications. To them digital editions exist, like some pariah, in a circulation wasteland, wandering, wandering, forever wandering in search of readers. Well sometimes this pariah is transformed into a wandering minstrel and readers stop to be entertained - not a lot, as a British magician used to remark. Not a lot depends how you calculate the numbers.

I know from experience that an average 10 - 15% of the digital edition circulation open the issue and read it. Doesn’t look many until you see that as a percentage of the overall circulation. It means digital can add anything from 1,000 to 15,000 to a readership. That is a reasonable number of eyeballs. The heady times when digital editions were lauded as the bright-eyed and bouncy supersub being called off the bench to replace the ageing print editions have long since evaporated, but digital, in my opinion, still counts for something.

And what of the doughty print editions? Written off, they continue to exist, if not prosper. And while 65% of circulation, according to the last research I saw, still praise print for the accessibility and browsability of its information, print will still have a role to play. A position confirmed by MMG Media’s decision to launch Electronics Sourcing Europe at November’s Electronic Exhibition.

More likely to kill print off in the medium term than dwindling readership are commercial pressures and declining revenues. Print circulations especially on the more frequent and higher circulation publications have been reduced. Caught in the pincer movement of print costs and falling revenues, some publishers will cut their losses and become, where possible, an online brand.

And so onto this month’s news. A quiet month as you might expect with the industry sipping its sangrias with the hot Jamaican sand beneath their feet. There were enough publishing types around to supply the following.

Laurence Marchini has departed as editor of Electronicstalk after seven and a half years of editing the online products site and providing erudite comment on the industry. Laurence is the power of global communications personified as he edited the site from his home in Australia. Nonetheless he oversaw an excellent product and will be tough to replace.

http://www.electronicstalk.com

Global Sources has chalked up a sizable coup by signing up Todd Christenson, former publisher of Hearst Business Media’s Electronic Products magazine as General Manager of EE Times-Asia’s print and online products. Christenson will head day-to-day sales, marketing and operational management of the entire EE Times-Asia local-language folio in print and online including Application Channels and Specialized Newsletters. At Hearst, Christenson was responsible for the print publication and a suite of online products, along with electronics-related print and online media platforms jointly owned by Hearst and IDG in mainland China. A familiar face at industry events, Christenson is an expert on leveraging both traditional and online media. He most recently spoke with magazine publishers of America on growing custom publishing revenues using digital magazine platforms. Originally from Nebraska, the 18-year New York metropolitan will have to forgo the pleasure of watching the New York Yankees for a while as he will be relocating to Hong Kong.

http://www.eetasia.com

Electronic Product Design’s e-Legacy Awards will be held this month, on Thursday 11 September. They are the only awards that celebrate the electronics industry’s corporate social responsibility with categories that include environmental design and projects as well as education, training, safety and medical advances. EPD’s editor, Caroline Hayes, reports that interest in these ‘feel-good’ awards, that boost the image of electronics companies and electronics design has increased since The e-Legacy Awards debuted last year. “We have been overwhelmed by the number and quality of entries from all of Europe and the US, with over 80 entries received. The interest from readers, who vote for the winners online, has also increased from last year, with over 3,500 votes and still counting - again from the US and Europe.” The winners will be announced at a luncheon held this year at the Roof Gardens, Kensington, London. For details and to book a place at the luncheon, contact Abby Walton at abby.walton@imlgroup.co.uk, tel: 01732 359990


http://www.epdonthenet.net

Electronics Weekly and the IET have joined forces for the first time to launch the Programmable Hardware Systems Conference. The event takes place on October 8-9 at the IET’s excellent London HQ in Savoy Place. The raison d’etre behind this says this year’s event will be targeting the cross over in hardware as well as software design. There will be a networking dinner on the first evening within the exhibition area providing excellent opportunities to network with delegates and speakers alike. Keynote speakers include Allan Cantle, President and Founder, Nallatech; Bernard Candaele, Deputy Director, Thales - Embedded Digital Systems; and Satnam Singh from Microsoft.

http://www.theiet.org/phs

And now a placatory note to appease Matthaus Hose, marketing and distribution director at Weka Fachmedien and a story which missed last month’s newsletter. He has just received the latest independent audit of online sites in the German publishing market, and well, he, along with his colleagues should be on a bonus. According to IVW which is the independent German organisation which produced the analysis, elektroniknet.de grew its page impressions from 545,000 in May to a whopping 924,000 in July, a phenomenal rate of growth. It makes them the clear leader in the market as its closest challenger Elektronik Praxis is on 348,000 page impressions, though the Praxis folk will be looking to their new web site for fresh impetus. Elektroniknet.de sits alongside market leading publications Markt&Technik which boasts 113,000 readers per issue and Elektronik which has 100,000 readers.

http://www.elektroniknet.de

EMS providers and electronics assembly equipment, material and software suppliers should start limbering up as from October 14, 2008, Circuits Assembly will be open for entrants to its annual Service Excellence Awards (SEAs) for. Now in their 17th year, the SEAs have an excellent modus operandi when it comes to assessing the winners. It recognises companies in electronics manufacturing for excelling in the critical area of customer service, allowing participants to benchmark customer service against their peers.

The awards ceremony will take place during the during the Apex trade exhibition on March 30, 2009 in Las Vegas, which is another good reason to enter.

http://www.circuitsassembly.com

Elektronik Industrie, is publishing an Application Guide which it says will offer an inexpensive means of on-line advertising, guaranteeing downloads of between 500 and 1000 for each application note, over the next 6-12 months. The Application Guide is a special supplement distributed in the October issue of Elektronik Industrie. It contains brief synopses of application notes, white papers and other extensive application-driven papers, each presented on a quarter page. Readers can download the complete reports in pdf format through Elektronik Industrie’s infoDIRECT service. Remarkably, Elektronik Industrie says that The Application Guide has a very long service life, with applications from the first-ever Guide – October 2005 – still being downloaded.

Beginning in August, Elektroniktidningen (Sweden’s leading technical magazine for design engineers) launches a new e-magazine solution. The idea is to publish each issue of the monthly magazine as a browser on the website etn.se, in parallel with the existing content of daily updated news.

“We’re always looking to expand our channel portfolio and this is of course a step in the right direction of new media habits,” says Marketing and Advertising Director Fredrik Söderberg. The new e-magazine will contain the entire content of the printed version as well as clickable ads.

fredrik@etn.se

You’ll have to hurry to get to Global Sources’ International IC-Taiwan Conference & Exhibition ( Taipei World Trade Center Sept. 9 to 11). What you’ll see there is the latest system and board-level design solutions, design automation and test, embedded systems, as well as passive and electromechanical technologies.

Leading technology companies scheduled to exhibit at IIC-Taiwan include Ansoft, ASUSTek, Atmel, Intel, Microchip, National Instruments, NEC Electronics, Renesas, VIA Technologies and Wind River.

http://www.iic-taiwan.com

All you power supply marketers out there should know that Darnell Group has juts published analysis which shows that the portion of the power supply market that will employ some form of digital loop control is expected to grow at an average annual rate of about 45% for at least the next five years. Digital power growth will be almost five times faster than the overall market. By 2013, the digital power converter market is projected to exceed 1.4 billion units. “To put the market in perspective, the worldwide total available ac-dc power supply and dc-dc converter unit market is set to grow at an average rate of only about 10% between 2008 and 2013,” stated Linnea Brush, Senior Analyst with Darnell. To find out more go to

http://www.darnell.com/News/DigitalPowerMarketGrowthprojectedbyDarnell.pdf