RS Components has added LeCroy oscilloscopes and serial data test systems to its T&M offering.
Tektronix led the way in to the distribution market a number of years ago.
Then Agilent followed and in the last 12 months LeCroy has joined them with a big push of its lower cost scopes through the distribution channel.
Does distribution work for scope? If the success of Tektronix and more recently Agilent in the sub-£1,000 scope market is any indictaor, it does.
The "big" product for both LeCroy and RS will be the WaveAce series of dual-channel oscilloscopes offering 60MHz to 300MHz bandwidths and sample rates up to 2GS/s.
The WaveAce oscilloscopes range in price from £620 to £1,827 for the top of the range 300MHz instrument. So LeCroy is competing with the TDS2000B from Tektronix and DSO3000A from Agilent,
Agilent Technologies has ramped up its distribution sales strategy this year and part of that was the launch of the mid-range 1000 series scopes in May.
The economic downturn has inevitably tightened budgets and it is likely that that lower cost instruments will become more important this year.
And it is in the area of low and mid-range scopes that the distribution channel could take on greater strategic importance.
Leave a comment