Europe will have to look to its political leadership if it is to have flourishing electronics markets in five years time.
This is one conclusion of a report called World Electronics Industry 2008-2013 by the French analyst house DECISION.
"There is one clear opportunity for Europe," Sebastien Rospide, co-author of the report, told Electronics Weekly, "Europe is good where it addresses societal needs because it has the big equipment companies, the major integrators and the technological understanding to put big systems together."
The kind of societal systems which Rospide sees as being the right ones for Europe to address are systems for security screening like people identification at airports and luggage scanners; for medical systems to scan, diagnose and protect an ageing European population; and environmental systems like solar electricity production.
"Germany is the No1 manufacturer of solar panels", said Rospide, "because of a political decision to equip 1m roofs with solar panels. France has the same programme which has triggered the French solar panel market."
The European electronics industry will be to some extent protected by its specialised need for societal electronic systems. "Until we see these societal markets turn into a broad-based mass market with standardised supply, Europe will benefit from localisation", said Rospide.
To that extent he sees the world electronics market of 2013 as being much more specialised by region, reflecting local regional specialisation, than it is today.
Rospide reckons it is not unusual to suggest that governments should seed electronics markets, pointing out that the IC industry would never have grown so rapidly if the US government hadn't required ICs for the Minuteman missile programme and President Jack Kennedy's Apollo Moon Rocket Programme.
Rospide's report reckons that European electronics production will remain flat for five years. "European production in 2013 will be the same as the level of production in 2013", he said.
This is better than in the USA, where he expects electronics production to fall at 2% a year for every year from 2008 to 2013.
Telecoms and industrial are what keeps Europe going, according to the report, with Europe's industrial electronics production representing 40% of world industrial electronics production.
A big problem for Europe is the merging of the mobile telephone networks, said the report. This will put thousands of people out of work and create a serious loss of business for telecommunications equipment companies.