Passive Component Market Loses Big

The soon to be released study on the global market outlook for capacitors, resistors and inductors indicates a broad market downturn in November, December and January, with outlook for the fiscal year ending March 2009 off significantly for the year in both value and volume of shipments. Backlogs in high volume supply chains, coupled with staggering losses in automotive electronics indicate a swift demise to the high tech economy in one quarter. Visibility on shipments in the quarter ending March 2009 indicate that passive component consumption is in recession, and the overall impact of failures in the high tech economy are now just being realized. Since passive components are required for all circuits, their economies are indicative of a three month outlook for end-product builds. The study shows the market getting worse in the short-term with signficant risks for manufacturers without cash reserves exceeding 20% of annual revenues. The study notes that "in the past, there were certain components that fared better than others, but in this downturn most of the 12 components we track in this study were all impacted in a similar manner because the nature of the downturn was from an unrelated market segment impacting the consumer's ability to spend. This caused a bottleneck that spilled back in the form of excess inventories in the supply chain, and new limitations on the outlets by which those products had been historically delivered to the consumer now compounds the issue. " Its not all bad news though. Some bright spots tied to global bailouts in the USA, China and Europe hold promise for specific capacitor, resistor and inductors especially for the efficient delivery of power and the integration of renewable energy supply into the existing power grid of industrialized nations.