Business recovery is a bit like the proverbial blind men describing an elephant—it all depends on which segment you are describing.
Business recovery is a bit like the proverbial blind men describing an elephant—it all depends on which segment you are describing. Certain markets, such as healthcare, banking, oil, and gas, have experienced very little downturn. Therefore, business recovery is not deemed necessary. But other markers—electronics, automotive, and state and local government—have felt the pinch and thus anxiously await business recovery and expansion. What are these driving elements?
Can we find an answer by drilling down a little deeper into certain emerging markets, such as printed electronics, photovoltaics (PV), and nanotechnology, that await expansion as new innovations finally yield a payoff? For example, PV experienced a significant rise in demand during 2008, largely due to substantial government incentives and credits offered in countries like Germany and Spain, which artificially stimulated consumption for a year or so, only to see the market nearly collapse when the incentives were withdrawn or exhausted.
Only recently have we seen the market recover in 2010, mostly as a result of superior thin-film technology that produces higher efficiency electrical generation by materials with much lower installation costs (e.g., a thin film on a roof tile or a low-cost substrate that has a profound effect on the total cost of installation). To this end, the example of the Solé Power Tile (Figure 1) claims to be the first building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) roofing shingle designed for curved roofing systems. Such a technology removes much of the extremely high cost of physically installing a PV panel compared to a traditional roofing installation cost.
The overall electronics semiconductor industry has only begun to experience recovery and expansion after a disastrous downturn in 2009, when OEMs precipitously cut off spending in the wake of a perceived drop in demand (it was actually a reaction to over-capacity of supply). This was felt more sharply on the purchase of backend equipment, such as PCB pick-and-place and soldering equipment used by the EMS industry. Additionally, related testing and measuring equipment used by the automotive and industrial market sectors went on hold until this year, when demand-limited capacity returned.
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