Market Research

Technology and engineering companies are still very worried about a lack of recruits with the necessary skill levels for the job. Companies even believe the skills shortage is serious enough to restrict business growth over the next few years, according to this year’s CBI/Pearson Education and Skills survey. The CBI/Pearson, which surveyed over a million employees in 310 UK-based companies, said ...

2015 will not be the year of wearable tech but better luck next year, says Simon Holt, Strategic Alliance Marketing Manager at Premier Farnell In September 2013 Forbes magazine reported on the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Gear and boldly declared 2013 “the year of wearable tech”. Then, following slow adoption rates over the next three months, this deadline was later ...

Jet engines are amongst the options for extending the range of electric cars, according to market research firm IDTechEx. According to IDTechEx, over eight million hybrid cars will be made in 2025. Many of these will be ‘series hybrids’ where only the electric motor is connected directly to the wheels – as in an electric vehicle – and the fuel ...

The future and recent past of electric flight and electric vehicles is the subject for a report by market research firm IDTechEx. For example, according to the firm, the UK’s University of Newcastle developed an ultra-light weight motor for a Boeing upper-atmosphere electric aircraft intended to stay aloft for months, while Versa Power Systems and QinetiQ worked with US military ...

Europe’s electronics industry is in recovery right now, says economist Nenad Pacek. Pacek, founder and president of Global Success Advisors and co-founder of the CEEMEA business group said:  “The electrical and electronics manufacturing industry is showing definite signs of recovery, especially in Europe, the US and Japan, and despite recent currency downturns in certain areas, emerging markets are still an important ...

The next generation of scientists and engineers continues to prove elusive for the industry.

The technology sector in the UK grew faster than the rest of the economy in the last quarter of 2014 and so avoided the slowdown seen across the wider UK economy, according to the latest KPMG/Markit Tech Monitor UK survey. The report found that tech sector jobs growth accelerated as a result of the widest performance gap between the tech ...

The automotive semiconductor market has bounced back very strongly in 2014 with 10% growth year over year to reach $29bn, according to market analysis IHS. The fastest growing segment for automotive semiconductors is hybrid electric vehicles, and IHS estimates that semiconductor revenue in this application could  achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR 2013–2018) of 20%. Other product segments to ...

Cloud computing/big data and 3D printing and (of course), the internet of things (IoT) are the three technologies most likely to transform the world during the next five years, according to technology market analyst IHS Technology. These are the technologies which could change the world the Gutenberg printing press to the steam engine to the microchip. So IHS Technology gathered ...

8-bit microcontrollers on steroids Microchip, the 8-bit microcontroller supremo, believes even quite sophisticated motor control can implemented with an 8-bit microcontroller. The firm is questioning the assumption that high end motor control requires the performance of a 32-bit ARM microcontroller or indeed its own 32bit MIPS-based MCUs. “We refuse to commoditise the 8-bit microcontroller, we are investing in the PIC ...