So what is Niche Electronics Manufacture about?
Well, Niche implies it is aimed at a small and specific market segment rather than a large and universal segment. Some examples might help here:
- specialist medical devices or patient sample handling equipment
- Very Early Smoke Detecting Apparatus
- in wall cable tracing equipment
- active RFID with long battery life, distance and unique ID
- ultra low power mesh networking transceivers intended for battery operated telemetry
- corrosion protection data logger
- cyclist indicator lights worn on your wrists
- medical training simulators
I have been involved in all these areas and some of these are for projects I worked on or even ran.
So having looked at some examples, why do I think we should be excited about Niche Electronics Manufacture in Australia?
I touched on this briefly in an earlier post that addressed the question of Low Cost Electronics Manufacture in Australia Can We Compete?
I believe the answer is YES! But we must be smart in how we go about it and we have to play to our strengths. I see these as:
- highly skilled technical workforce
- world class software developers and embedded systems engineers
- good levels of capability and automation in PCB assemblers
- we like winning and overcoming challenges
- we don’t immediately do things the same as everyone else
- we have been doing this for a fair while now in spite of there being little government support or industry assistance
- a smaller Low Cost Electronics Manufacturer can be agile and tightly connected to their customers
So the challenge is actually a marketing one and not specifically a Product Development issue. But once you have the opportunity identified, then there is no reason we can’t do it here.
Low Cost Electronics Manufacture in Australia makes good sense if you approach it the right way.
Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years. For more information go to his LinkedIn profile. This post is Copyright © Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.
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