This is the tenth edition of the European Electronic Manufacturing Services Industry report (previously titled the Profile of the European Contract Electronic Assembly Industry) and updates the ninth edition, which was published in August 2009. Although building on the database of information which has been gathered since the publication of the first edition in 1993 the new report has been fully revised with greater emphasis being placed on analyzing the EMS providers and the key trends which will impact the industry in the period to 2015.

As in the previous reports, EMS is defined as electronic manufacturing offered as a service to other companies. It does not include the in-house activities of companies, which also provide an EMS service. The production of the printed circuit board is to some extent included, since some EMS companies have acquired PCB production capabilities and all are often involved in the design aspects of the PCB layout when offering design services as part of the EMS activity.

The generation of the market numbers has been completed using both a ‘bottom up’ approach where details of EMS companies have been accumulated from all sizes of companies, and a ‘top down’ view of published data from a variety of sources. Statistical information which was obtained from government departments, trade associations, company annual reports and various other publications, and in particular the Yearbook of World Electronics Data, was combined with data obtained from individual companies, to evaluate the state of the market and future developments. Further information was obtained by Questionnaires in personal and telephone interviews.

Forward looking forecasts are constructed from the last full reported year (2010) and include known information to date on EMS company activities such as collaborations, mergers, acquisitions and closures. These forecasts also include information from EMS and other companies on their expectations for growth in the coming years. For sales to individual sectors such as computer, communications, mobile etc, we have used information from the companies themselves either in the main from published accounts or from known information about plant specialization, number of employees etc.

Annual reports, company brochures and corporate literature were collected from over 200+ EMS companies. Where information of a confidential nature was obtained, this was used solely to evaluate market trends in product and end-user sectors. In addition a further 500 plus companies, primarily the smaller national EMS providers, were checked for the directory.

The consultants also visited relevant trade shows including Productronica 2009 and Electronica 2010 in Munich; the UK-based NEW Electronics exhibition in 2010 and 2011 and SMT & Hybrid 2010 and 2011 in Nürnberg, Germany.

Where applicable local currencies have been converted to Euro values. The forecasts assume constant Euro values. The Euro values used in the report are given in the Appendix.

Original Design Manufacturers (ODM) and Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS)

The key differentiator between the two types of organisations is that ODM’s own intellectual property as well as providing electronic manufacturing services. The EMS is considered to only provide the manufacturing services. In Asia, there are large manufacturing services who also own intellectual property in the products that are sold as branded products by the OEM. Whilst there are companies in Europe that do offer the ODM service and state that ODM sales have been made, it is frequently not separated from the overall sales in Europe in its published form.

Given the difficulty in separating out specific ODM sales data, we have incorporated this within the total EMS sales. From the research we would estimate that the total ODM element is approximately 5-10% of the total EMS values and mainly within the top 20 companies.

Report Structure

Following the Executive Summary, Section 3 provides a detailed analysis of the trends impacting the European EMS industry in the period to 2015. EMS revenues are provided for individual countries and split by region. A figure for the European EMS market by segment is also provided. Again for this edition, the report has also analyzed the trends impacting the four principal groups of EMS company:

• Global
• Multinational European
• Sub-regional
• National

Section 4 provides profiles of the top twenty EMS providers in Europe with an estimate of their sales for 2010. The structure of the industry and a summary of the latest industry developments are also provided. Section 5 provides a breakdown by country and region. For each section an overview of the electronics industry is provided along with a summary of the key factors impacting the EMS industry. For each country or region we have outlined the role the global “Tier 1” companies are playing along with profiles of the leading EMS companies.

Section 6 is a directory of over 1000 manufacturing locations from over 700 separate companies. The directory is split by country. Companies who are focused solely on cable and wire harnesses are not covered within the directory.

For the this edition we have again provided a ranking of the Top 50 European EMS providers for 2010, the table in Section 7 of the report.