Georg Steinberger, chairman of DMASS, said: “The second quarter ended below our expectations, but bookings are still holding up. The first half of 2016 ended with a healthy 5.2% growth at the EMEA level. We would expect 2016 to remain positive, as the slowdown did not occur across the board but was driven by a few special effects.”
According to Steinberger, one of these special effects was manufacturers selling direct into the market without using a distributor.
Regionally, the differences in Q2 performance were said to be considerable. While Eastern Europe, Germany, Austria, Iberia and Turkey held up well, France and Italy finished on average and the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Russia, Poland and Israel came back negative.
Commenting, Georg Steinberger said: “What we are seeing from a regional perspective is a weakening market in the UK, more production transfer from Nordic to Eastern Europe and strong growth in some low cost manufacturing countries in Eastern Europe. On the positive side, Germany returns a healthy growth and so does Italy.
“The question is, ‘are we seeing the end of a long positive streak for distribution or is it just a normal slowdown?' I would tend to believe that in spite of a slowdown, the opportunities for organic growth are still excellent in the mature economies.”
On the product-side, the differences were supposedly just as considerable. While power, sensors, Opto and MCUs, analogue and memory grew above average, RF and logic returned negatively.
