Hello, and welcome back to another installment in the long-running Top 25 Distributors list, brought to you by EBN and hosted this year by our colleagues at EDN.
As you’ll see from the annual list, not too much changed amid the electronic components distribution landscape in 2012. Some companies lost revenue ground, and some gained—some significantly—but overall it was a flat year.
But the business itself—its internal challenges and opportunities—is wilder than ever, from shifting market and technology priorities, to regulatory and compliance challenges, to counterfeiting, to risk management, to crisis preparedness and management.
The stories inside this year’s issue help illuminate that and more.
Our overview story, which recalls Ulysses and the Sirens, delves into one of distribution’s biggest challenges today: how much to embrace the high-volume, low-margin, and highly volatile consumer electronics business.
Tam Herbert wonders whether any lessons from the Japan earthquake and tsunami and Thailand floods sunk in at all.
Longtime supply-chain editor and observer Barbara Jorgensen ties a neat thread between the two crucial halves of our world: the design chain and the supply chain. What are the conflicts between the two, and how do we resolve them? And Jennifer Baljko pens an in-depth look at the latest legislation, regulation, and strategy around anti-counterfeiting of components.