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Elektronik Praxis | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about Elektronik Praxis up to December 2018.

A Shuffle Around at ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS

September 8th, 2017

Sebastian Gerstl is making the move to Software-related topics, after announcing that he will no longer be responsible for Embedded Systems at ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS.

Sebastian is taking over the editorial duties for all Software-related topics from Frank Graser who left ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS last month. He is leaving his Embedded Hardware responsibilities to his colleague Michael Eckstein, who will handle all Processing and Embedded hardware related topics.

We wish them all the best of luck in their new roles.

ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS celebrates its 50th Anniversary with a museum at electronica

October 18th, 2016

ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS is celebrating its 50th anniversary in style at electronica this year, with a Milestones Museum.

Situated in Hall A4, stand 201, the ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS milestone museum will explore the main exhibits of the electronics history.

Keeping with the historical theme, this year ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS are providing the traditional white sausage breakfast on the 9th November, with the Weisswurst created according to an historic recipe, ensuring an authentic feel of time travel surrounding ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS museum.

50 years of ELEKTRONIKPRAXI

September 27th, 2016

Congratulations to the team at ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS, who are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication. This milestone has been reached at the same time as the publishing house (Vogel Media) celebrates its 125th year.

Back in 1891, Carl Gustav Vogel started the company with the launch of a publication for stamp collectors, Internationales Briefmarkenoffertenblatt. A couple of years later in 1894, he launched Maschinenmarkt, pioneering the concept of controlled circulation publications paid for by advertising. In 1939 the business entered the electronic and electrical sector with the launch of Elektrotechnik.

The company now publishes more than 100 professional titles covering subjects such as industrial products, automotive, IT, legal and taxation. To learn more , read this interesting history of Vogel (in German).

ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS to publish official PCIM newspaper

March 21st, 2014

ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS will publish the official PCIM newspaper, which will have a print run of 10,000 copies and will be published on all three days of the show. Editorial deadline is 1st May, with the advertising deadline the 7th May. Trade shows remain a very important part of the marketing mix in Germany, and it’s good to see ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS supporting the event with a publication. A show news email, which will be sent to the visitors and the ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS newsletter recipients will also be published.

Positive response to ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS digital compendia

September 3rd, 2013

When publishers create innovative ways to reach the audience, it’s often hard to know how well they work, particularly if you don’t participate. So it was great to get some specific results from ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS about their latest digital compendium, which covered PCB technology and design. The idea is to publish the best articles on a particular topic in a single volume, and this compendium has been downloaded 2,000 times and 600 printed issues were requested by our readers so far, showing there is real interest in the format.

There are two more compendia to be published this year:

• Power design & power supply, publication date Sept. 27th
• Analogue technology & mixed signal design, publication date Nov. 25th

ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS sees strong interest in automotive topics

June 27th, 2013

I was talking with ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS recently and was very impressed to hear well their automotive content is doing. In the first five months of this year, the ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS automotive channel generated 157,312 page views, whilst their dedicated elektromobilität-praxis.de portal, which only launched in October 2012, almost hit a quarter of a million views (it achieved 239.742 page views). And with such interest in electric and hybrid vehicle design, hopefully the plant will also benefit!

ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS launches media centre for video content

January 31st, 2011

ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS has launched a new section of the website specifically for video content. Having invested heavily in generating content for “EP-TV”, it’s not surprising that the publication has decided to take advantage of this valuable material. The layout provides easy access to a large number of videos, was well as offering images and webinars.

Elektronik Praxis launches mobile site

October 15th, 2010

Despite digital magazines only just beginning to gain traction with readers, the pace of change hasn’t slowed for publishers. Mobile devices – such as the iPhone and iPad – present new opportunities and challenges. I was really pleased to see that Elektronik Praxis has launched a mobile site (mobil.elektronikpraxis.de) designed specifically for browsing on smartphones. The site not only looks clear on my Blackberry, but also loads quickly, making browsing on a small screen a fun experience.
Additionally I understand that Elektronik Praxis is developing an iPad app that will deliver content including digital versions of the magazines. Now all I need is an iPad…

Elektronik Praxis' Sommerfest pictures

August 4th, 2009

Some great pictures from the annual Elektronik Praxis summer bash, are now up on their website.

Elektronik Praxis focuses on Embedded World interviews

July 24th, 2009

Elektronik Praxis sent me through a really nice brochure about their advertising offerings for Embedded World. Normally I try not to write too much about show special issues, as all magazines have their own features that focus on key shows. Praxis, however, managed to grab my attention with a couple of lines at the end of their email. Firstly they are holding their traditional Bavarian breakfast on Wednesday between 11am and 1pm – something I’m always keen to attend. And also they are conducting video interviews on their booth at the show. For free!

OK, Elektronik Praxis are not the first or only magazine to do editorial video interviews (as opposed to paid-for interviews). ED Europe and ECE have both done this very successfully. Elektronik Praxis, however, effectively turn a part of their booth into a TV studio, and because they are not having to visit different stands, they should be able to create even more content. Check back on Napier News after the show, when I’ll review the video that all the different publishers created at Embedded World.

elektronikpraxis.de redesign

July 18th, 2008

“Two years is a long time on the internet”, or at least this is what Johann Wiesböck, editor-in-chief of Elektronik Praxis thinks. The E Praxis website has been redesigned, and in addition to the shiny new modern layout, the site now offers better functionality: users have much simpler naviation, allowing them to go straight to content that interests them, and the search has also been improved. Advertisers will be pleased that the banner advertising and white paper promotions now can be placed more easily near relevant content, which should also mean that users see more relevant and interesting content.

I don’t cover all the website redesigns on Napier News, but thought that the E Praxis site was interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly the site naviation – drop down lists of [quite a large number of] categories – do make it very easy to go straight to useful relevant content. Also the social networking side of the site seems to have been de-emphasised, although I believe all the functionality remains. E Praxis were a leader in adding social networking onto their website, but it looks like engineers don’t need or want social networking on a magazine website. Maybe it will happen, but I guess that the audience of magazine sites are simply too small and too focussed to sustain social networks.

Franziska to return to Elektronk Praxis

July 19th, 2007

Franziska Harfy is leaving E&E to return to Elektronik Praxis. Although we can’t know the full story, clearly it is a loss for E&E. Our readers in the USA will be interested to hear that she will not start until 1st Jan 08, and is on “gardening leave” until the end of the year!

Funky advert shapes

Decembr 22nd, 2006

Two titles have recently been promoting unusually-shaped print adverts – both Electronics Weekly and Elektronik Praxis are offering a variety of shapes including Ls, Ts, triangles and even “goal posts”. Although they offer a differetn way to grab the readers attention, they also attract a premium price. Are they worth it? At Napier, we think that it’s more important to ask whether the format would work with your campaign creative. With most ads starting life as a page layout, forcing the creative into this format often produces an ineffective advert. If the graphics department are given the opportunity to develop concepts specifically for these unusually formats, however, the results can be stunning. Contact Napier to find out if a different shape could help boost the effectiveness of your advertising.

ElektronikPraxis.de - a New Approach to Online Marketing

September 29th, 2006

Maybe it’s the late 1990’s again! We seem to be spending more and more time covering the online sector, and without doubt the most interesting story of recent months is the re-design of the Elektronik Praxis website.

Vogel has invested millions to create what will probably be the most ambitious site in the industry. In addition to the conventional online publishing model, they will offer a huge range of technical content in addition to the magazine articles, aim to create a social network for the German-speaking electronics community and, perhaps most interestingly, they will aim to make significant income from selling sales leads.

The first big move is to allow companies to upload white papers and other technical content to the site (with options to pay for promotion or just have a free listing). Although there will be an editorial filter to ensure adequate quality, the magazine is hugely ambitious in trying to get a large section of the industry to upload technical information. Of course one downside is that inevitably it will mean a significant proportion of the content is in English, but with promises of a search engine that “understands” electronics, offering ways to intelligently narrow a search, perhaps this won’t be a problem. We’re always concerned about people trying to compete with Google, but if Elektronik Praxis can really make narrowing searches easier and have sufficient content, there is a chance this will work. We’ve been promised that an upload facility for content will launch on 10th October.

The next objective is to create a community to compete with Open BC, which is the strongest online social network for business in Germany. This is a real challenge, as Metcalf’s law suggests that reducing the population you can address will significantly reduce the value of the network. This network, however is closely linked to the success of selling sales leads.

The final objective is to track users on the site (with the same registration as for the community section of the site), and sell sales leads based upon their activities. Clearly the ability to sell leads with information on the documents that these people have opened, forwarded or printed is very valuable. Additionally the fact that this site is new allows Elektronik Praxis to sell email addresses, by insisting everyone that registers opts-in to having their data passed on, and if they don’t they won’t be allowed to see premium content. This could be the best idea for a long time for both the companies that purchase the leads, and also for Vogel’s profits – if it works. We see a couple of challenges: German engineers might not allow their data to be passed on, or get tired of sales calls due to activity on the site, the content might never reach the critical mass to drive people to the site or alternatively the industry might balk at the price per lead (40 Euros). Of course there will also be standard banner advertising on the site as well.

With the new site recoup the fortune that Vogel have invested? Personally, I’d like to see it work: it’s a brave and innovative move. For advice on how to take advantage of this new approach in the European electronics media, or more detailed analysis of Elektronik Praxis’ plans, contact Napier.

Elektronik Praxis Summer Party

July 28th, 2006

First issue of Elektronik Praxis email newsletter

June 29th, 2006

The first issue of the Elektronik Praxis email newsletter appeared yesterday. Vogel has chosen to go with the “headline only” style, where you only get the headline, and have to click on the story to read it. It seems to be a matter of personal choice as to whether people like this format, or prefer to also have the first couple of lines of the story in the email: at Napier there is a definite split over which is best. What Elektronik Praxis has done, however, is to neatly separate industry news and new product information.

Elektronik Praxis announce new UK rep

September 2nd, 2005

Elektronik Praxis, conveniently based a few hundred miles from the UK has announced that Mark Hauser will represent the title in the UK. Mark is based in the US – several thousand miles from the UK. We think this will be a good move, with someone that understands the British culture (although probably not all of our jokes), and who also is close to the US-headquartered companies that form a large percentage of the German advertising spend placed from the UK.

Elektronik Praxis to move to 100% personally addressed circulation

November 17th, 2004

In an interesting follow-on to the story about the circulation of Elektronik Praxis, the magazine tells us that they will change the entire circulation to be personally addressed. They say that they plan to complete this in 2-3 months, and that the results will be shown in their EDA audit for 1st July 2005. This represents a significant improvement in the quality of circulation, and should make Elektronik Praxis an even more attractive choice for advertisers.

Elektronik Praxis withdraws English-language media kit

November 15th, 2004

Oops! Elektronik Praxis has withdrawn their 2005 English language media kit, because of “errors”. There is a significant element of the circulation that is sent to companies without a person’s name on the address. In the English language version of the kit, this circulation had been added to the engineering and management figures (although this was not done in the German media kit). There were red faces and many apologies at electronica over this! If you need to know the correct circulation information, contact Napier, and we’ll give you the correct audited figures. We can also give an impartial view on who is the market leader in Germany (as measured by ad pages), which was another contentious topic at the show!

by Admin

Electronics Sourcing | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all the blog posts we have written about Electronics Sourcing up to December 2018.

Electrical Sourcing to close

January 31st, 2017

Sadly, MMG Publishing has decided to call time on Electrical Sourcing, with the January / February 2017 edition to be the last one published. Always a smaller publication to it’s big sibling, Electronics Sourcing, the closure of the title shows how difficult it is for publishers to take an idea and create a franchise of titles from it.

Mark Leary, the publisher at MMG told us, “Electrical Sourcing has not followed the same successful momentum that the other MMG publications are generating and has not been covering its own production costs for quite a while. With limited sales income it is no longer viable to continue publishing.”

The good news is that the editorial content for Electrical Sourcing, such as industrial automation, sensors, lighting, box build and enclosures will be merged into an even stronger Electronics Sourcing.

First Issue of Electronics Sourcing Deutschland Published

February 11th, 2016

Electronics Sourcing Deutschland, the new German-language publication in MMG’s “Sourcing” family has just published its first issue. In print. That’s right: a new print title for the already-busy German market.

The February 2016 issue of Electronics Sourcing Deutschland (click link to view online) will be distributed to 13,500 readers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with more copies available at the embedded world show in Nuremberg. One interesting sign of the commitment of MMG to their print readership is tat the publication is already registered with the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), in preparation for its first ABC independent audit. Clearly print is not dead!

MMG have invested in a high quality editor, Wolfgang Patelay. This popular journalist brings a huge amount of experience to the title, providing real credibility to Electronics Sourcing Deutschland.

The new publication follows the same format as other sourcing products, and is clearly aimed at an audience of buyers, rather than design engineers. This approach has proved very successful for the sister titles, and delivers obvious value to distributors in particular, who must cultivate their relationship with buyers if their work designing-in products is to be rewarded with purchase orders.

Mark Leary, ESD’s publisher said “ I am delighted with the launch edition of ESD. Wolfgang Patelay has done a superb job with quality and informative editorial specifically for the electronics purchasing function and Marcus Plantenberg has also done a great job encouraging advertisers to support this launch edition. To produce a 52 page launch edition is an excellent effort and matched with the reader interest from readers in Germany, Austria & Switzerland I have decided to fast track through the ABC audit registration especially now we have two full time circulation researchers speaking to readers in German language”.

ESD will be published in April, July and October in 2016, and in 2017 will increase frequency to ten editions.

For more information, see the Media Pack, which is available in both English and German language.

Electronics Sourcing plans Boston event

July 10th, 2013

With the UK ES LIVE event featuring 91 exhibitors and delivering an impressive 57% growth in 2013, the team at Electronics Sourcing has decided to expand their ambitions to the USA. Their first American event will be ES LIVE Boston, which will be held on 3rd October 2013. It will be a free one-day networking event that is designed for both the electronics supply chain community and design engineers. For more information visit the ES LIVE website.

Video from ES Live 2013

June 16th, 2013

Did you miss ES Live 2013 and the delights of Milton Keynes? Don’t worry! The organisers have kindly provided these video highlights of the successful show:

For more videos, check out the Electronics Sourcing YouTube channel.

Electronics Sourcing to hold seminars at electronica

September 14th, 2012

Electronics Sourcing will hold two ES Live seminars on Thursday 15th November 2012 in the Electronica Forum, Hall A3 Room A3.242. The event will consist of two live debates:

• Time-to-Market – 2.00pm – 2.45pm
• Supply Chain Security in a Turbulent World. 2.45-3.30pm

Digital is dead - readers want print!

August 20th, 2012

According to Electronics Sourcing, 90% of their readers want the publication in paper format. Is this typical of all publications in the electronics sector? Probably not. Whilst it’s common knowledge that Europeans still have a fondness for “dead tree media”, I suspect that there are several reasons why Electronics Sourcing might have got such an extreme response. Read the debate on LinkedIn, where readers and journalists chime in with their opinions.

Electronics Sourcing aims for a global audience with new website

February 4th, 2012

Electronics Sourcing has launched a new website which it hopes will reach electronics purchasing and supply chain professionals in the UK, Europe and North America. The site launches with over 4,000 articles and features a wide range of content, including a section dedicated to electronics assembly professionals.

The site looks great, and grabbed my attention because it is built on WordPress. We’re currently running a project for a client to build them a new site using this CMS, and I’m fascinated by the way that the same platform is being used for such a wide range of sites: from small personal blogs to large publications.

ES LIVE moves to a bigger location

July 6th, 2011

The UK is one of the toughest countries for trade shows, so it’s great to hear that ES LIVE 2012 is relocating to a larger venue – the Royal Berkshire Conference Centre Hotel within the Madejski Stadium, home of Reading Football Club and the London Irish Rugby Club. The new location has space for 80 table top exhibition stands, and room for 300 people to attend the industry networking dinner.
In addition to principal component manufacturers, franchised and non-franchised distributors, catalogue distributors and CEMs, the organisers plan to add exhibitors and conference content for manufacturing and test engineers, which will promoted via Electronics Sourcing’s sister magazine Electronics Assembly.

Purchasers buy in to Electronics Sourcing Live

May 27th, 2011

Electronics Sourcing Live is not a typical trade show. More reminiscent of a matchmaking service for purchasers and suppliers than a conventional trade show, the success of the event depends on the quality and not the quantity of buyers who attend. Mark Leary, organiser of the event, told me that they are delighted with the outcome of the first Electronics Sourcing Live, which was held just over a week ago, saying that half of the 34 exhibitors have already enquired about bookings for next year and they’ve set a target of attracting “around 80” exhibitors in 2012.
The total number of attendees for the one-day exhibition and conference was 300: a decent number considering the nature of the event. The evening dinner also proved to be successful, with 120 people networking in an informal setting.
If you didn’t make the event, you can find video highlights on the Electronics Sourcing website.

Electronics Sourcing North America completes BPA audit

January 31st, 2011

There has been a clear move away from audits by publishers in the last couple of years. In addition to the cost saving, digital distribution means that many publishers focus on open rates rather than detailed audits.
Whilst open rates are important, they can’t give the demographic information that is provided by an audit. So I was delighted to see one new publication, Electronics Sourcing North America, complete its first BPA Worldwide Initial Business Publication Audit less than a year after the title was launched.
Mark Leary, MMG Publisher, made a great point about audits: six years ago when the company was formed BPA audits were the preserve of the large publishing houses. Now it’s often the small publishers who focus on a specific market that are investing in high-quality, requested circulation and the audits that demonstrate the quality.
Although there is a lot of value in the stats available online, I’ve been sad to see the “easy” metrics, such as clicks and opens, gradually push out the more detailed analysis of quality and relevance that is provided by a rigorous audit. Let’s hope that advertisers reward MMG and the other publishers that continue to invest in circulation quality.

Electronics Sourcing North America appoints Gina Roos as full-time editor

December 12th, 2010

Electronics Sourcing North America has appointed Gina Roos as the publication’s full-time editor, and at the same time has acquired Gina’s Electronics Advocate website.

Electronics Sourcing plans networking event

August 21st, 2010

Electronics Sourcing will be holding a event called Electronics Sourcing Live, consisting of networking, seminars & a table top exhibition in 2011. The event will be held at the Regency Hotel, Newbury, Berkshire on 12th May.
Launching a show in the UK is a brave move, something Electronics Sourcing seem to specialist in! An excited Mark Leary, Publisher of Electronics Sourcing, told me that he felt that there was strong demand for an event that targets purchasing professionals in the electronics industry told me that there was a strong demand for an event that specifically for purchasers. The event will also include a networking dinner that will allow manufacturers, distributors and purchasers to get to know each other better.
The event is an interesting idea. Although the UK is possibly the toughest market to get people away from their desks, niche events continue to work well. With seminar topics such as Lead Times, Component Obsolescence, Counterfeiting and Time to Market, the content should be sufficiently different from other events to make this day a success.

Electronics Sourcing Europe strengthens sales team

January 20th, 2009

Annette Tisken has joined MMG Publishing as area sales manager for advertising sales within Germany, Austria & Switzerland for Electronics Sourcing Europe and Electronics Assembly. Annette, who previously worked on E&E, will also work alongside Iris Steinbacher the editor from Munich.

Electronics Sourcing Europe claims successful launch

September 19th, 2008

MMG Publishing has told us that the November 2008 launch issue of Electronics Sourcing Europe will run to 126 pages, an impressive feat for the first issue, even allowing for the boost in interest because of electronica. In addition to exceeding pagination expectations, MMG has expanded circulation to 31,000, and promise that they will have 35,000 readers “soon”. Who says publishing is dying?!

Sourcing and Assembly increase frequencies

December 16th, 2007

MMG Publishing has annouced that Electronics Sourcing and Electronics Assembly magazines will both increase their frequencies in 2008. Electronics Sourcing plans 12 monthly editions, plus an electronica special issue, and Electronics Assembly will
increase to eight editions during the year. This is great news, and with the improvements made in the last year to these titles’ websites, this move helps demonstrate that European still like and use both print and online media.

Electronics Sourcing to launch email newsletter and new website

January 29th, 2007

Electronics Sourcing is launching a new website and email newsletter, giving advertisers new ways to reach their purchasing-orientated audience. Interestingly, the existing website www.electronics-sourcing.co.uk will remain separate from the new reader-orientated site at www.esdigital.co.uk. We’re promised that half of the newsletter content will exclusively online, with the other half taken from stories also covered in the print publication, providing a strong reason for people to open and read the email. The initial circulation is 5K, with Electronics Sourcing claiming 100% opt-in. The email newsletter will be issued every 2 weeks, and will offer advertisers nine banner slots and four ad boxes.

This move obviously makes sense from the publisher’s point of view, and offers a list of purchasing contacts which is a segment with limited choices to source names. If we were to be picky, we’re not quite sure of the reasoning behind having two websites, and feel that this might confuse or even discourage readers who land at the www.electronics-sourcing.co.uk site by mistake.

Electronics Sourcing breeds new title

March 27th, 2006

MMG Publishing has announced the launch of Engineering Sourcing, the creatively-named sister publication of Electronics Sourcing. Launching in May, this title aims to target the buyers of electro-mechanical/mechanical products and services, and will be edited by Jon Barrett, who also edits Electronics Sourcing.

Electronics sourcing to launch in April

March 30th, 2005

The Electronics Sourcing website is now live, and the magazine team – reunited from MIT Publications – of Jon Barrett as editor and Mark Lery as advertising manager are aiming for an April launch.

Electronic Sourcing to launch in UK

February 22nd, 2005

It’s good to relay some news of a new title launch in Europe! A new monthly magazine called Electronic Sourcing is launching in in the UK in April. The editor will be Jon Barrett, whose recent credits include editor of Electronic Designer and Electronics Buyer, and advertising will be handled by Mark Lery who also worked on these titles. The circulation is planned at 9300 – addressing about 5500 companies – from the first day. The madia pack is due out next week, and we will update you on the details when we’ve had a chance to review the data.

by Admin

Elektronik | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about Elektronik up to December 2018.

Elektronik Magazine Announces Elektronik Neo

February 27th, 2018

Elektronik magazine has revealed the plans for their new magazine Elektronik neo, which will be launched in November 2018.

Elektronik neo will target the younger generation in the electronics industry. From start-up founders and employees, young professionals and electronics and information technology students; Elektronik neo will be a platform for them to learn from.

The Elektronik team are positioning Elektronik neo as ‘new, young, different’, whilst also being unusual and revolutionary. As the first magazine in the German market to write about electronic industry topics specifically for a young professional audience, Elektronik has stood out as one of the first magazines to truly think about the future professionals in the electronics industry.

Content for Elektronik neo will include trends in the electronics industry, fundamentals and overviews of technical developments, profiles of companies and start-ups who are of interest as employers, and information on building a career within electronics.

Elektronik neo will also include interviews, reports,  technical contributions, as well as the promise of “witty columns”.

By providing a platform for the younger generation within electronics, the Elektronik editorial team are working hard to encourage graduates and young professionals alike to advance within the electronics industry career ladder.

Companies have sometimes found it hard to make a career in electronics appealing to the younger generation. Elektronik neo will provide encouragementto this generation, as it focuses on engaging topics such as Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Energy Harvesting and Cyber Security.

I am sure that Elektronik neo will be important in shaping the next generation of engineers, as the editorial team encourages their readers to attend conferences, career start-up shows and learn everything they need to know to advance with an electronics career.

Elektronik Magazine releases reader's survey

November 19th, 2017

Elektronik magazine has released a report on a survey they conducted around adverts published in issue 18 of Elektronik. The report was an interesting read, particularly its analysis of engineers and their use of publications and social media.

A total of 320 interviews were used for this report, and although the information  that follows has  been pulled from Elektronik readers so can’t be generalized to the industry as a whole,  it does generate some very fascinating information.  The report also covered reader loyalty, purchase behavior and social media usage in the industry.

Elektronik reported that, on average, four people read each copy of the magazine . The average reading time for the magazine was 32 minutes, showing that their readers are i actually taking the time to sit down and read their content.

In terms of other journals for professional electronics, Elektronik (had a readership of 97% with the next highest at 49% being Markt&Technik. Elektronik Praxis had a readership of 43% and Design and Electronic had 38%. It should be noted that Markt&Tecknik and DESIGN&ELEKTRONIK fall under the same publishing house as Elektronik so we expect them to have  higher readership rates.

Surprisingly 62% of readers never used www.elektroniknet.de, with only 38% saying they did, showing many German engineers still prefer to get information in print form rather than online. Looking into this further, 71% of readers who visited elektroniknet.de used the online service to gain better background and general info on the industry, whereas 58% used it to search about a topic or a problem, and 53% used the online service to search for suppliers and products. Further, it was intriguing to see how far the readers would actually go in order to gain some exclusive online content. 60% said they were willing to divulge personal data, but only 6% said they would be willing to pay. In terms of the newsletter it was revealed that 51%  didn’t receive it: a surprisingly low number, considering that they subscribe to the magazine.

With regards to social media usage, the report reveals some very similar figures to what we have seen before., although LinkedIn has overtaking XING, with 31% of readers using LinkedIn for professional purposes, and only 26% using XING for their job. Although the trend of Germans moving to LinkedIn has been clear for some time, it’s interesting to see that it has established a clear lead over local networking tool XING.

There is very little usage of other social networks for business. The report revealed that only 3% of readers use Facebook for professional purposes, 5% use twitter and perhaps a little surprisingly 8% claim they use Google+ for work. It is clear, however, that there is a lack of use of social media in the technology industry.  Comparing these results to the La Elfa study from 2012, other than the growth of LinkedIn, little has changed, and social media still has limited impact on the industry and there isn’t much to suggest that social media platforms such as Facebook and twitter are likely to have a significant impact on German engineers in the near future.

New Power Editor at Elektronik

June 15th, 2017

Congratulations to Matthias Heise who has taken over the position of Power Editor at Elektronik for WEKA- Fachmedien.

Matthias is a graduate from the University of Regensburg, and is fluent in German and in English.

We wish him the best of luck in his new role.

elektronik celebrates its 65th Birthday

Elektronik becomes official publication for VDE/VDI microelectronics group

May 12th, 2016

Elektronik has become the official publication for the VDE/VDI-Society Microelectronics, Microsystems and Precision Engineering (GMM).  All members of this group will receive a printed copy of Elektronik, and the publication will also be distributed at events.

This is an interesting move, and one that should ensure a successful future for the publication. Elektronik has always had a significant number of paid subscribers, although as companies have stopped funding the subscriptions, the numbers have declined. This is a pity as payment for the subscriptions indicates to advertisers that the readers are very engaged. Today there are about 4,000 engineers paying for a copy – still a significant number, but not as many as in the past. The partnership with GMM raises the sold circulation up to around 12,000.

Although someone paying specifically for the publication is rather different to receiving it as part of your membership package, it’s clear that the members of the GMM are a valuable audience that advertisers will want to reach. So although “sold” has a slightly broader meaning for Elektronik now, I think that this move will help the publication retain a great reputation for not only carrying in-depth technical content, but having a high-quality circulation that advertisers want to reach.

Elektronik still #1 for visitors to embedded world

April 6th, 2014

The results of the readership study conducted at embedded world 2014 show Elektronik retaining the top spot as favourite journal of visitors to the show.

Compared with the results of the same readership survey a couple of years ago, ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS has done well to take third spot away from D&E, but in general the ranking of the publications remains similar. There is a slight drop in the readership numbers for most publications, but this is not an indication of the death of print in Germany. In fact more than half the visitors to the show claimed that they read Elektronik on a regular basis. This is an amazing figure – even with the close link between the event and Weka arguably skewing the results a little – and shows that the trade journal is still a surprisingly way to reach electronics professionals in Germany.

Elektronik wins VDE award

January 30th, 2014

Congratulations to Gerhard Stelzer, editor in chief of Elektronik on his VDE (German Electronic and Electrical Association) award in the “Technical Media” category. WEKA FACHMEDIEN GmbH, publishers of Elektronik, also won the VDE Technology Media Prize – the second time the publisher has received this award.

Elektronik to print a "readers' choice" issue

June 28th, 2013

What a great idea from Elektronik! The 13th August issue is going to have content defined by the readers. By allowing readers to vote on topics to be covered, suggest additional topics and even propose specific articles, Elektronik has completely handed control of the content over to the readers. It’s a brilliant idea, and I’m looking forward to seeing the first “readers’ choice” issue.

Harry Schubert leaves Elektronik

April 2nd, 2013

Popular editor Harry Schubert left his editorial role at Elektronik and has also moved back to Berlin to be closer to his family. As he put it to Napier, in 2001 he changed his role from reader to editor, and now it is time to revert back to being a reader of Elektronik. We all wish him well with his new career.

Elektronik offers discount for 60th anniversary issue

March 17th, 2012

On 26th June 2012, Elektronik will publish its 60th anniversary issue. To celebrate, Weka is offering advertising in this issue at just 60% of rate card prices, although you will have to congratulate the publication in your advert to get this deal.

Peregrine shortlisted for Elektronik's products of the year awards

February 24th, 2012

Congratulations to our client, Peregrine, who has been shortlisted in the passive components section of Elektronik’s Products of the Year 2012 awards. The amazing Peregrine PE64904/PE64905 digitally tunable capacitors (DTCs) have been selected, and I’m delighted that the readers of Elektronik have recognised that these devices are going to have a huge impact on RF designs in many different applications. Everyone at Napier would like to wish Peregrine the best of luck for the awards night on on 15th March.

Peregrine shortlisted for product of the year by Elektronik

December 22nd, 2011

Congratulations to our client Peregrine, whose DTC (Digital Tunable Capacitor) has been shortlisted in the Passive Component category in Elektronik’s Product of the Year. The winner is chosen by a public vote, so please vote for Peregrine!

Elektronik launches ecodesign prize

October 23rd, 2009

The first Elektronik ecodesign prize has been awarded to Stephan Benecke of TU Berlin, for his thesis about "Energy Harvesting in micro systems technologies“. This award, which is presented during the Elektronik ecodesign congress, is given for an exceptional masters thesis about “green” electronics. Proving that the award is international, second prize was awarded to Andreas Köhler, Lund University Sweden, for "End-of-life implications of electronic textiles – Assessment of a converging technology".

It’s great to see that Elektronik, and co-sponsors Rittal, are encouraging young engineers, and I hope that this award goes from strength to strength in the coming years.

LEM and Microchip shortlisted for Elektronik awards

February 15th, 2008

Congratulations to LEM and Microchip, who have both been shortlisted in their categories for a product of the year award from Elektronik. We’re always pleased to see our clients nominated for awards, and wish both Microchip and LEM the best of luck for the announcement of the winners at the award presentation ceremony in March.

Gunther Klasche retires

December 3rd, 2007

Everyone at Napier would like to wish long-time Editor in Chief of Elektronik, Gunther Klasche a wonderful retirement. Gunther is stepping down after a long and extremely successful career in electronics journalism at the end of the year. Gunther will be succeeded by Gerhard Stelzer, another great editor who has been at Elektronik for 12 years. Although it’s a shame to see the end of Gunther, Elektronik has a great team, and we believe it will continue to be one of the flagship publications of the European electronics media.

Elektronik adds new special issues

November 24th, 2007

Elektronik has added two new special issue topics for 2008 – Elektronik Embedded and Elektronik Semiconductor. This brings the number of printed issues to 45 for 2008 (26 regular issues and 19 specials).

by Admin

Electronic Specifier | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about Electronic Specifier up to December 2018.

Electronic Specifier Launches New Startups Magazine

April 25th, 2018

Electronic Specifier has announced the launch of their new magazine Startups, a publication that will be aimed at the startup community and will cover the latest project news and stories in the sector.

Following the Hardware Pioneers event held in London, it’s clear to see that an active startup community currently exists within the UK, especially within the technology sector. The event saw startups, entrepreneurs and investors gather to share ideas and to help get tech projects off the ground. With recent research stating that the number of new technology companies launched in the UK last year rose by almost 60%, Electronic Specifier has targeted a sector that is truly thriving and in need of a magazine dedicated to their community.

The Startups magazine will be a quarterly print and digital publication, covering the latest project news and stories in the sector, as well as insight from investors, accelerators, incubators and industry experts, who will be able to offer advice and guidance on how to take an idea and make it a success.

The debut issue of the magazine is now available and gives good insight into the great content we can expect to see in the future.

It’s great to see Electronic Specifier expand their horizon and fill a gap in the industry. We look forward to reading future issues and learning about the startups community and the leaps of faith they take to make their vision of technology a reality.

Electronic Specifier Becomes a Major Stakeholder in Europe’s biggest loT start up Community

October 24th, 2017

Electronic Specifier, the leading digital publisher, has become a major stakeholder in Europe’s biggest loT start up community.

On the 22^nd of September it was announced by Electronic Specifier, publisher of information resources on the global electronics industry, that it has attained a 50% stake holding in Hardware Pioneers.

Founded by David and Fabiano Bellisario, their vision is for Hardware Pioneers to connect educate and inspire its members to build a smarter future through the connection of hardware and loT technologies. An assortment of the companies who have supported the community and taken the stage at hardware pioneers conference, include Intel, Texas instruments, NXP, Microchip, Mouser, Avnet and many of the other leading manufacturers and distributors. Both founders expressed their gratitude towards the companies’ collaborations and their long-standing involvement in the startup ecosystem, Electronic Specifier has truly become the center of the loT scene amongst Europe.

This will allow Electronic Specifier to enhance its reach within the global electronics and technology markets by further expanding its relationships within the startup community. They will continue to work with Hardware Pioneers by making contributions to their editing, marketing and sales support network, as well as accessing it’s ever growing database of over 200,000 engineers and developers.

Electronic Specifier’s managing director commented on the announcement saying “We see the agreement with Hardware Pioneers as a fantastic opportunity to accelerate the growth of the company. Our combined vision is to quickly expand the Hardware Pioneer community across the globe, connecting startups with the industry expertise that will help them build a successful businesses.”      

CEO David Bellisario from Hardware Pioneers commented “We are extremely excited about our new business partnership with Electronic Specifier. Together, with our complementary strengths we will be able to grow the community beyond the UK and Europe. Together, we will connect, educate and inspire raising startups and pioneering engineers to build a smarter tomorrow through connected hardware and IoT technologies.”

Here at Napier we are pleased to see Electronic Specifier investing in more publications, and it’s interesting to them targeting  professional makers, rather than engineers. We look forward to seeing what the future holds for both Electronic Specifier and Hardware Pioneers.

Two industry specific microsites added to Electronic Specifier’s growing portfolio

February 4th, 2017

A favourite publication of ours and our clients, Electronic Specifier, has announced the launch of two new microsites to serve the medical and aerospace and defence industries. Electronics are vital for the future development of these markets – enhancing the development of medicine and disease diagnosis, innovating surgical procedures, protecting armed forces, improving navigation and increasing the speed and efficiency or air travel.

The Medical microsite will cover themes such as nanomedicine, diagnosis, testing and monitoring, surgical robotics, medical wearables, sensors and genetic engineering. The diverse Aerospace & Defence market site will encompass space exploration and astronomy, PPE (personal protection equipment), radar and navigation, components, marine and navy, land vehicles, air force technology, airports and commercial travel.

Both microsites are now live and can be visited by heading to aerospacedefence.electronicspecifier.com and medical.electronicspecifier.com

Three new journalists at Electronic Specifier

November 9th, 2016

Electronic Specifier has welcomed three new members to their talented team.

Alice Matthews, a graduate from The University of London Institute in Paris, with a 2:1 in French studies is the new editor of Electronic Specifier’s French magazine. Alice speaks both English and French fluently, and will contribute to the research of unique articles, as well as being in charge of the French website and Twitter, including the production and distribution of weekly newsletters.

Alice will be joined by two new editorial assistants, Anna Flockett and Daisy Stapley-Bunten. Anna is a keen journalist who has completed a number of impressive placements, including one for the BBC. She graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a 2:1 BA Honours in Journalism.

Daisy recently graduated from the University of East Anglia Bachelor of Arts, in English Literature with a second-class honour, upper division. She can speak confidently in Italian, and her job role’s will include editing and uploading press releases, researching and writing original content, and attending and reporting on press events and trade shows.

We wish all three of them the best of luck in their new job roles at Electronic Specifier.

Electronic Specifier to print 10,000 copies for electronica

May 23rd, 2016

Electronic Specifier is planning a big presence at electronica. They’re electronica’s official pan-European digital media partner and to celebrate it they are printing 10,000 copies of that month’s Electronic Specifier Product magazine. This circulation is in addition to the normal 65,000 digital readers.

It is great to see that Electronic Specifier is continuing it’s approach of printing copies for trade shows: I saw how interested visitors to their PCIM stand were when they saw the printed magazine, although it does seem strange that the official digital partner for electronica uses the event as an excuse to roll out the print copies!

Joe Bush Will Take Over Editorship at Electronic Specifier Design

October 23rd, 2015

After almost eight years as editor at Electrical Engineering Magazine and CIE Magazine, Joe Bush will join Electronic Specifier Design as editor. He will take over editorship from Phil Ling, who is focusing on his own publication, Enginuity Europe.

Electronic Specifier Design is a monthly digital magazine for the electronics design industry. Nat Bowers will continue as editor of Electronic Specifier and Electronic Specifier Product Magazine.

Congratulations to Joe on his new role, which he will begin on November 16th.

Electronic Specifier to host round-table on security at electronica

October 18th, 2014

ElectronicSpecifier will be hosting an Industry Round-Table at electronica 2014, the 26 International Trade Fair for Electronic Components, Systems and Applications in Messe Munich, Germany, 11th to 14th November.

The Round-Table will take place on Wednesday 12 in the electronica Forum Area in Hall A3. There will be two 90-minute sessions taking place between 10:00 and 13:00, comprising six industry experts in each session.

The Round-Table offers a chance to question the very people responsible for shaping security solutions from the world’s leading semiconductor and embedded software companies; a unique opportunity for any engineer attending electronica 2014.

Each session will address topics such as the relationship between Security and Safety, Protecting Gateways, Hardware-Based Security, Securing Open Standards, Privacy by Design, Protecting the Edge, Physical Attacks, Data Security Vs Device Security, Trustable Platforms, Security Enabling Services, Security in Resource-Constrained Devices, and Software-Based Security.

This is definitely a must go to for any attendee at electronica 2014!

Electronic Specifier launches German-language website

March 14th, 2014

Electronic Specifier has launched a new German-language website, www.electronicspecifier.de. The Electronic Specifier team has demonstrated their approach works with the current English and French websites, and it is good to see continued ambition to grow and expand.

In Germany, the competition from other publishers is intense: certainly far greater than France, where there are few publications. It will be interesting to see how successful Electronic Specifier will be in Germany. We wish them all the best, and will monitor the progress of the new site and report on it in future issues of Napier News.

ElectronicSpecifier redesigns website

August 8th, 2013

Clearly the summer is the time to redesign publication websites, as there’s a nice new clean look to ElectronicSpecifier.

ElectronicSpecifier launches test and measurement supplements

June 17th, 2013

ElectronicSpecifier continues to grow: they’ve just announced that they will publish quarterly test and measurement supplements. The first of these will focus on microwave and RF test issues, and will be distributed in print and digital format to coincide with the European Microwave Week Conference and Exhibition in Nuremberg. The supplement won’t cover microwave and RF exclusively, although the theme is clearly designed to tie in to the show.

Choosing to launch as both print and digital is an interesting move: clearly ElectronicSpecifier have identified some advertisers still keen to pay for print.

The editor of the supplement will be the popular, and very experienced test and measurement expert, Mick Elliott. As Mick is already writing about distribution for ElectronicSpecifier, this is a great move. I’m delighted that ElectronicSpecifier continues to invest in great editorial talent, and look forward to the seeing the first issue of this supplement.

ElectronicSpecifier adds another editor

October 12th, 2011

ElectronicSpecifier has strengthened their editorial team with the addition of Phil Ling. He will edit the digitally published electronics engineering title, ElectronicSpecifier Design, and will work closely with John Taylor, who will remain editor of ElectronicSpecifier Product, as well as taking on new duties for the company’s microsite products that target the Wireless, Medical, Automotive, Defence/Avionics, Alternative Energy and Optoelectronics sectors.
Phil’s 15 years of experience in the world of publishing will be a valuable addition to ElectronicSpecifier’s editorial resources, as will his in-depth expertise on embedded design.
I’m really pleased to see a publisher investing in great editors and I’m sure that Phil’s knowledge and writing talent will increase the readership of ElectronicSpecifier Design. Digital magazines still haven’t been embraced by the entire electronics marketing community, but it seems to me that if publishers invest some of the savings they get from not having a print edition in improving their editorial resources, they’re going to produce a great product. As people realise the distribution method isn’t as important as the quality of the content, perhaps we’ll see a move towards digital magazines.

ElectronicSpecifier to launch microsites

January 31st, 2011

ElectronicSpecifier is launching a series of design focused, vertically targeted micro sites. The publication is planning to address an extra vertical market every quarter, with ElectronicSpecifier Automotive scheduled to go live during the week commencing 7th February, ElectronicSpecifier Wireless launching in April 2011, and ElectronicSpecifier Optoelectronics planned for Q3 2011. We’re also promised additional micro sites in the future.
In addition to the micro sites, ElectronicSpecifier will also issue a monthly email newsletter for each market.
It’s good to see ElectronicSpecifier expanding its online activities, and the vertical focus should prove very attractive to suppliers that target specific applications. I’ll be interested to see how the micro sites are integrated within the main ElectronicSpecifier property, and to whether a more focused email newsletter circulation will increase open and click-through rates.

ElectronicSpecifier to launch new publication aimed at designers

December 21st, 2010

I strongly believe that we only seen a fraction of the potential impact of the move from print to digital publishing in the electronics media. Publishing no longer requires a significant financial investment, and distribution moves from high print and postage cost to become an almost insignificant amount. What really matters now is content.
ElectronicSpecifier, who continue to deliver impressive stats for their product-driven website and digital magazines, has seen the opportunity and will launch a publication targeting design engineers in April 2011. The new publication will be branded ElectronicSpecifier Design, and their existing pan-European publication will be rebranded ElectronicSpecifier Product. ElectronicSpecifier France will also continue as normal.
This is an interesting move. I’d expect the content of ElectronicSpecifier Design magazine to be dominated by contributed material, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There is some fabulous contributed material available, and many publications have increased the amount of contributed material they accept as financial pressures have reduced the editorial resources available. As long as the articles are reviewed, and the bar for acceptable quality is set reasonably high, readers will find this new title a valuable resource.
With EDN Europe having moved to all-digital distribution in 2010, and ED Europe having been all-digital for several years, it will be interesting to see how the new publication compares against a couple of the strongest brands in the electronics media. Personally I think there is more than enough room for three strong design books in Europe. Electronics is such a vast industry that having editors curate the best content into a magazine format is hugely valuable to engineers. As the number of pan-European titles available in print dies, I believe that the readership of digital publications will grow, and if this is reflected in increased open rates, I’m sure that advertisers will respond by moving budgets to these titles in 2011.

ElectronicSpecifier launches jobs site

April 30th, 2010

It’s amazing how the internet has changed some businesses. In the past electronics companies looking to hire people had the choice of either spending a couple of thousand dollars on an advert in a magazine or calling in a recruitment agencies. Now online recruitment has dramatically cut the cost of advertising jobs .

Despite the greatly reduced cost, it’s arguable that there is more competition for job adverts. i recently wrote about the upgrade to the Electronics Weekly jobs service, and now there is a new entrant to the market: Electronic Engineering Jobs. The new site, from the same publishers as Electronic Specifier, allows you to list jobs, have them emailed to prospective candidates and even bundles in adverts in Electronic Specifier digital magazine. Let’s just hope that the economic recovery proves strong, and that there are more than enough new jobs to support all the recruitment services in Europe!

ElectronicSpecifier recruits editor

April 26th, 2010

Having taken the unusual approach of launching a new publication without an editor in place (we are told they’ve had some freelance help), ElectronicSpecifier has announced the appointment of John Taylor as editor of their Digital Magazine.

John has a long history in the electronics industry, having previously been Editor of What’s new in Electronics and Managing Editor of Electronics Times, Editor of Electronics Manufacturing Products (EMP) and most recently freelance Editor of Electronics magazine. John has also had a spell working in PR, allowing him to see the industry from both sides of the fence.

With a circulation of 66,000 ElectronicSpecifier Digital Magazine has one of the largest distributions of any title in the European electronics media. It was also one of the first to make use of video content inside the publication. The appointment of a recognised editor is another step forward as this new title tries to disrupt the more established publications in our industry.

ElectronicSpecifier launches two new digital magazines

December 23rd, 2009

2009 has been a dreadful year for publishers, and so I’m delighted that I’m going to end the year with a post about the launch of two new titles. ElectronicSpecifier will launch a monthly pan-European digital magazine in January and a French language title in February. There hasn’t been an announcement about a French website, but I’d confidently predict that unless the magazine is a failure, the site will follow fairly early in 2010.

Unsurprisingly both titles are planned to be “product books”, although I understand that the magazines will also include some industry news.

The launch of a pan-European digital title is easy to understand. ElectronicSpecifier has a strong pan-European list that will provide a circulation of more than 45,000 and a partnership with Hearst that could add another 20,000 readers. Their French list is just over 8500, which could increase to over 10,000 with Hearst’s data.  And of course once you have an editor for the website and a good database, the incremental cost of publishing a digital magazine is very low.

After the recent decisions by Reed and Groupe Tests that left the French market with just one magazine, the launch of a French title isn’t surprising. In fact I know of at least one other publisher with pretty advanced plans for a French print title.

The ElectronicSpecifier titles will use NxtBook as their technology platform. Although not quite matching Ceros, who I think is the industry leader in terms of the reader experience, NxtBook should provide a great platform for the magazines. Unsurprisingly multimedia adverts, including video, animation and sound will all be offered from the first issues.

I’m confident that these titles will prove successful. Firstly these titles are fundamentally low-cost, and I would expect advertising rates to be aggressive. The database has also proven itself to be effective, generating good open and response rates, even though the demographics are not as comprehensive as some other titles. And clearly the French title is entering a market desperate for more publications: in fact I’d say that this launch represents ElectronicSpecifier winning a race to announce a new French title.

ElectronicSpecifier has a clear advantage over digital versions of print titles: the magazine can be designed for on-screen reading and to work synergistically with the web. Replicating a print magazine digitally just doesn’t work, even on large high-resolution screens. Better layout will improve open rates: just look at the “designed for digital” Electronic Design Europe, which has outstanding open rates despite using a simple PDF format for distribution. We’ve not yet seen a product book specifically designed for digital, but I hope that ElectronicSpecifier have the confidence to get away from the format of product news in print titles. This format was designed to drive enquiries through the old bingo card system. In digital titles you just don’t need all the detail: if I’m looking for a product in a digital title all I need is a couple of sentences giving me the main facts about the product, and I’ll know immediately if I want to click through to the full story and datasheet.

I don’t, however, think that the recent flurry of digital titles means it’s all over for print – at least not yet. Open rates for digital titles are low, and few advertisers values a digital reader as highly as a print reader.

Over the next few years, however, e-book readers are going to improve dramatically from the pretty shambolic offerings that we have available in Europe. We’ll then have the standards fight – similar to Betamax against VHS. Eventually there will be one great e-book platform that frankly is better than carrying round a big pile of books and magazines. When this happens, the reading experience will be great, magazines will be delivered direct to your e-book reader, and open rates will rocket. It’s even possible that in the future a digital subscriber will be seen as more valuable than a print reader, although this is a long way off.

Electronic Specifier rolls out video section

November 24th, 2009

Electronic Specifier has launched a “Tech Videos” channel on their website, becoming the latest online publication to add short movies to its content. Although the site isn’t creating any videos itself, with the ever-increasing quality and quantity of videos produced by manufacturers and distributors, the site is unlikely to be short of content. Clearly video continues to be more and more important in our sector, and at Napier we’re working hard to help clients generate and promote online video. Next week I’m attending a showing of videos we’ve commissioned for a client that aim to show that it is possible to produce fun videos about electronics that have the potential to go viral: keep checking Napier News for more details of this project!

Hearst buys Electronic Specifier

November 16th, 2008

Hearst Electronics Group, has announced that they have acquired ElectronicSpecifier.com. I think this is a pretty obvious move for both parties – Hearst gets a stronger presence in Europe and Electronic Specifier gets a stronger sales team in the US and can be included in packages that cover sites in Europe, the US and China.

Other benefits include Electronic Specifier selling advertising all the Hearst Electronics properties in Europe, greatly improving their representation in Europe and presumably a nice cheque to the owners of Electronic Specifier!

Electronicstalk guarantees article publication

July 20th, 2007

ElectronicsTalk is offering guaranteed coverage in their email newsletter and promotions that include “a special highlight on the front page” for any original articles exclusively published on the site. The site, which has much of its traffic driven from online searches appears to have fallen in the search rankings recently, and has also seen competition from a number of similar sites, such as Electronicspecifier. Presumably they hope to increase the value of their content, and some search results with this exclusive content.

We’re not so sure how well this will work in practice. Would companies really not have the article published anywhere else online (i.e. not even on their own websites)? Also there are likely to be companies producing articles that are only slightly modified versions of the ElectronicsTalk “exclusive” and publishing them widely, reducing the value of the content provided to Electronicstalk. Not sure what to do about this opportunity? Email us and we’ll be happy to discuss the options in detail.

EngineeringSpecifier to launch

May 1st, 2007

In a completely unsurprising move, the owners of ElectronicsSpecifier, Specifier Partnership have announced they will be launching EngineeringSpecifier. Topics covered include design; control systems; electrical and electronic equipment; drives and motors; mechanical components; T&M and measurement; valves and pumps; capital equipment; and industry news.

This is a logical move to expand the Specifier family. The Specifier website, and several others, accept pretty much all the content they are sent, driving impressive traffic figures with email newsletters and search engine results. With their huge content, these will often appear ahead of the manufacturers’ sites and editorial-driven magazine sites in many search results. At Napier, we don’t think it will be long until we see some major publishers trying to boost their traffic by adopting the “accept everything” model for online product news, rather than using valuable editorial resources filtering and re-writing releases. If this happens, it will be interesting to see whether the magazine site – with its additional editorial content – can out-perform the independent product listing sites.

Another new online title for electronics

February 3rd, 2006

Almost ready for the launch, ElectronicSpecifier offers another home for product and industry news. Promising to include picture and illustrations as well as text, the site will also rate one story as “Best of the day”. Do we need another product-driven site? At Napier we actually think it is a good thing: more chances for engineers (and Google!) to find your latest product news, although the publishers of the site will have to work hard to catch sites like Electronicstalk, which is a similar publication with a huge archive of legacy releases.

by Admin

Elektronik i Norden | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about Elektronik i Norden up to December 2018.

Elektronik i Norden returns to print

August 31st, 2013

Don’t get too excited! Whilst there will be a printed edition of Elektronik i Norden this year, there will be only one, produced specially for the Embedded Conference Scandinavia, which will be held on 5th to 6th November. This Embedded Technology Special will also be distributed to the Swedish circulation of Elektronik i Norden, as well as being made available as an online e-magazine. I’m told the print edition should be around 20-28 pages, and will cover the nominees for the Swedish Embedded Awards 2013 as well as editorial coverage of embedded systems design.

Elektronik i Norden closes print edition

December 5th, 2012

A couple of days ago, Elektronik i Norden announced they were closing their print edition. Today Gote Fagerfjall sent out a short email confirming the facts:

Starting New Year 2013, Elektronik i Norden will be Internet based only. EiN 11/2012 is the last printed issue.

The EiN newsletter and the EiN web will continue in expanded versions. The newsletter becomes more of a focus point. Technical articles and commentaries continues to be (even more) important.

The newsletter already has around 10 000 subscribers. The printed issue has a whopping 25 000 subscribers. We will of course try to shift all the readers over to the newsletter.

It’s not a surprise that print is dying. The advertisers who fund the publications have lost enthusiasm and it’s clear that print is becoming less and less viable in almost every case. Even when readers like print, it’s just not an economic option as the closure of the print edition of EE Times US showed. In fact Gote said:

"…the move away from paper is quite a simple one for us. We’ve seen the trend for years and we had plenty of time to prepare. "

In his email, he also mentions the fact that Elektronik i Norden brought the concept of controlled circulation to the Nordic market. Elektronik i Norden is focussed on building the circulation of the email newsletter: let’s hope that publishers continue to focus on the quality of circulation, ensuring we know that the people reading the publications and viewing the adverts really are potential customers.

Elektronik i Norden to produce show special

September 10th, 2010

Elektronik I Norden will produce the annual Embedded Special for the embedded conference Scandinavia, to be held on October 19-20, and for the Scandinavian Technical Fair (October 19-22). Both events are co-located in Stockholm.
Swedish readers of EiN will also receive the Embedded Special as an extra section to issue 8 (published October 1st), and it will also be available online as a digital magazine.

EiN gives email newsletters to all magazine readers

December 9th, 2009

The publishers of Elektronik i Norden has added all subscribers to the paper magazine to the circulation of their weekly email newsletter, creating a total circulation of 17,347 covering Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

I think this is a pretty pragmatic approach. Although the culture of data protection might mean that a few of the new recipients don’t want the emails, I’m sure that most subscribers will find the content valuable and advertisers will be delighted to have another effective promotional vehicle in Scandinavia.

Editor interview - Gote Fagerfjall, Elektronik i Norden

November 18th, 2009

I was delighted to be able to talk with Gote Fagerfjall of Elektronik i Norden. This publication is fiercely independent, which has allow them to innovate over the years, including being one of the first titles in our sector to add social media features to the site. EiN has managed to create a great blend of the conventional and new, and Gote’s views on the future of print and the difference between the IT and electronics industry are fascinating.

In the past you had a close partnership with TechInsights/CMP, but have remained very independent. What advantages are there of being a relatively small publisher?
Independence is important for many reasons. The most obvious one is the need to react quickly to changes. This is much easier in a small organisation. A small organisation also tends to be more efficient, which is very important these days.

How successful is the digital edition of Elektronik i Norden? Do you think digital delivery is the future of magazines?
The digital edition is doing OK. We’ve been running our own system for almost two years now and everything seems to be working nicely. Now it’s time to take a few more steps, but we’ll come back to that later.
Digital delivery is of course extremely important, but it doesn’t really replace the printed paper. New stuff seldom replaces old stuff (the telephone didn’t replace the railway, even though some people thought it would).
On the web we have an online edition plus a digital version of the paper. The digital version of the paper could be seen as a substitute for print, but in reality this is not the case. Maybe we will see 100 percent digital delivery in the future, but I’m not convinced.

Is it difficult to create a title for both print and digital delivery? Does the readability of the digital version suffer?
It’s not that difficult to create a title for both print and digital. The online edition is of course different and the digital version of the paper is quite readable on a normal screen. The tabloid size is not a problem.
This year has been tough for all publications in our industry, and Elektronik i Norden is one of the titles that has reduced print frequency. Can local-language titles service small markets survive?
Yes, it has been a tough year. But the reduction of print frequency is actually something we have been discussing for several years. Combined with the online edition, one printed paper per month is OK.
Local language titles makes a lot of sense. It would of course be possible to have a localised version of an international paper, but in reality it wouldn’t be much cheaper to produce (if at all). The electronic industry in our area is quite healthy and local presence and local content is vital.

Elektronik i Norden has been one of the pioneers in adding social media features, with the comments facility on your website. It seems, however, that many stories don’t attract comments. Do you think the comments are successful, and how do you decide this?
Social media features are nice, but we haven’t been pushing them up to now. I’m certain comments will be more common in the future, but probably not at all to the extent you see in the IT domain.

In similar industries such as IT, independent blogs have become a significant medium. Yet in electronics there are few independent blogs, with most blogs part of the online presence of a large publication. Why do you think electronics is different?
Again, the electronics industry differs quite a bit from the IT industry. This has always been the case. It might change a bit as the software content grows in the electronics industry.

What changes do you expect to see over the next three years in the European electronics media?
The online electronics media will mature over the next three years. Plus we might see a few “glorified blog sites”. News will probably still be the basis of the sites, but we will see more online workshops, online exhibitions and other new ideas where interactivity is important.
The future of the printed electronics media is harder to predict. It depends totally on the action of the advertisers. But from the reader’s perspective, I think a combination of print and online is essential. It’s so much faster to leaf through a paper and most of the time you really have no need for interactivity. Reading a technical article on the web takes at least twice the time compared to reading it in printed version. And if you want to read outdoors or on the bus/train there still isn’t an alternative to print.

What is the one thing you’d like to change about the way companies do PR in the electronics industry?
I would like the companies to check where the designs are actually made. Then they might realise the importance of using and supporting the European electronics press. Most European papers have a hard time and one way of cutting costs is to discontinue the printed version. I think this would be very bad for the electronics industry.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, when you’re not writing about electronics?
There is so much to do and so little time to do it. I enjoy kayaking, sailing, cycling, reading, listening to music, carpenting and quite a few other things. And in a little while I will walk into my house and watch the latest episode of Simpsons.

What’s your favourite gadget?
My favourite gadget for the moment is probably my netbook. But I’m waiting for a much smaller and lighter version.

Elektronik i Norden to continue combining issues

May 9th, 2009

Following-on from the announcement earlier in the year, Elektronik i Norden will combine issues for the remainder of the year, cutting the number of published issued in 2009 to 11. Although it’s always disappointing when a publisher reduces frequency, it’s good to see EiN taking the action they feel necessary to survive in the long term, and I hope to see a return to higher frequency in 2010.

EiN combines issues

February 16th, 2009

Given the tough economic conditions, it’s probably not a surprise that Elektronik i Norden has decided to combine issues no 5/6, 7/8 and 9/10. This still leaves them with 15 print issues planned for 2009, although presumably issues might be combined in the second half of the year if advertising revenues don’t pick up.

EiN wants your comments

January 17th, 2008

The new Elektronik i Norden website was launched at the beginning of the year, and is a dramatic change in terms of look and philosophy from the previous EE Times-driven site. Designed using the impressive and trendy Joomla! open source content management system, the website has been designed with a very uncluttered look and feel. Interestingly the site allows users to make comments on all stories published, not just blog postings.

At Napier, we really liked the site. We think the “comments everywhere” approach is a great opportunity to Swedish engineers to discuss the key issue and understand other engineers’ views on differnet topics. Additionally we’re told that there has been a lot of interest in the newsletter, and have already had hundreds of engineers sign up via the new website.

Read Elektronik i Norden On Line

February 1st, 2007

Elektronik i Norden has launched an online version of the magazine that is available on the home page of theEiN website. You don’t have to be a registered subscriber to access the magazine, and it’s easy to print out individual pages.

The system EiN is using is by Weblisher, which is developed by Swedish company Textalk. It looks much like other systems, although doesn’t create hyperlinks for web addresses or email addresses, although they can activate an area of the page (e.g. an advert) as a link. Despite being simple, we liked it – the system is fast and the search is good, although currently only searches within the issue you are viewing. Some of the screen area is taken up by sponsorship, although with modern large-format displays this shouldn’t be a problem. Läs den på nätet, as they say in Sweden!

Tony Barrett to retire from representing Elektronik i Norden

May 9th, 2005

by Admin

EPN | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about EPN up to December 2018.

EPN to close, EDN Europe moving to EBP

February 13th, 2013

Reed Business Information is exiting the electronics industry (well OK, they still have an electronics email e-bulletin, but that doesn’t really count as a publication). Their licence to publish EDN Europe expires at the end of this month, and UBM has decided to re-allocate it to EBP, publishers of EE Times Europe. Martin Savery, the publishing director for EDN Europe and EPN was fairly philisophical about the decision, pointing out that, “in every other market both brands licensed to a single licencee”. As the only territory where EDN and EE Times were published by different companies, it seemed obvious that something had to give in Europe.

The last issue of EDN Europe from Reed will be February 2013. We don’t have any news yet of EBP’s plans for EDN Europe, but keep checking the blog over the next few days.

Sadly RBI has also decided to shut EPN. Although I believe that other publishers would have been interested in taking on the title, apparently the management of RBI aren’t prepared to invest the time to sell it. And in a way you can understand it – the costs of putting together a sale might well be more than the value of the brand. There will be a March issue of EPN, but title will close and the website will be pulled down at the end of the month.

As the changes haven’t been officially announced, we’ve yet to hear what EBP will do with EDN Europe. Personally I really hope that Graham Prophet will continue to edit EDN Europe – he’s almost synonymous with this publication. Caroline Hayes, however, will be looking for a new role, although I imagine she will soon have a number of offers in her inbox. We understand that Martin Savery, who speaks and writes Chinese, plans to do some consultancy for the Asian markets.

UPDATE: 14th Feb 2013.
RBI has also confirmed that Industrial Automation News (IAN) will also be closed as part of this change. The last edition of IAN was December 2012.

EPN 40th anniversary forum at electronica

October 26th, 2012

Congratulations to EPN, which is celebrating 40 years of publishing with a Forum at this year’s electronica. Featuring leading figures from the industry, including our client LEM, which is also 40 years old this year, the forum will be held on Wednesday 14th November from 10am to 1pm at A3-242 and is free of charge. It’s going to be an interesting event, and we will try to bring you some video highlights of the forum after the show.

EPN cuts showcases and partners with Darnell

September 1st, 2012

EPN has decided to reduce the frequency their product showcase emails to once a month, but at the same time are introducing a new newsletter being run in partnership with Darnell: PowerPulse weekly Europe. It’s great to see a publication deciding that the way forward is to improve the editorial content of their email newsletters, and I’m sure that the PowerPulse emails will not only be appreciated and well read by subscribers, but the higher levels of engagement will also make any advertising more effective.

EPN to celebrate 40 years at electronica 2012

June 4th, 2012

EPN will celebrate its 40th anniversary with the EPN Forum – an event at electronica, where speakers from a range of companies will look back over the last 40 or more years of the electronics industry and reflect on how electronics design and technology has changed. The focum will be held on Wednesday 14th November, from 10am to 1pm in Hall A3.
The forum is a great idea and should attract some high-level speakers. I’m definitely going to be dropping by to walk down memory lane with EPN!

EPN delivers bumper digital issue

March 9th, 2011

Although I admit that the “designed for on-screen reading” layout is inevitably going to generate more pages for a given amount of content than publications that are simply replicating a print design, I was still impressive to see the 86-page March issue of EPN. It’s always good to see magazines doing well, and it’s nice to see that digital-only publications can pull in some serious advertising.

EPN launches renewable energy email newsletter

February 15th, 2011

EPN has launched a renewable energy email newsletter. The newsletter covers a very wide range of products that can be used in renewable energy, smart grid or power-efficient applications. Although it would be nice to see a clearer focus on renewables, the newsletter is clearly a great addition to EPN’s portfolio.

First digital-only issue of EPN

January 12th, 2011

The first digital-only issue of EPN has been published and is now available on the Ceros platform. The new layout looks very similar to the preview we showed in Napier News, and the content remains product driven, although there has been a noticeable increase in more in-depth articles.
Personally I like digital publications, and the new layout of EPN is great. By designing the magazine specifically for on-screen EPN is easy on the eye – even on my small laptop screen. It’s great to get a digital publication that doesn’t require constant zooming in and out to read the text!
The January issue is a very respectable 52 pages, although this would probably equate to about 20 pages in the old tabloid print format.
I really hope that digital publications thrive, and that EPN is one of the publications that can lead the way. The adoption of digital magazines was slowed significantly by publishers simply creating digital versions of their print layouts, which proved unreadable on-screen. ED Europe has long lead the way with a layout specifically designed for digital consumption (and has achieved outstanding open rates as a result), and it’s great to see other publishers recognise the importance of design on digital platforms as well as in print.

EPN and EDN Europe drop BPA

November 3rd, 2010

In the “official” announcement that EPN will switch to all-digital circulation next year, Reed has also announced that EPN will resign from the BPA at the end of the year. Sister publication EDN Europe also recently made the same move. The claim is that by publishing “monthly statistics about digital edition circulation, opening rates, click-thru rates, PDF downloads, etc.” there is not need for an audit as “the digital edition has all the measurability and performance statistics that a website has to demonstrate advertising return on investment (ROI) and the effectiveness of both editorial and advertising.”
I’m not convinced by the argument. Although there is no question that digital delivery of a magazine does give you great stats, it doesn’t cover the demographics that you’d get with an audit – for example job role, products specified, etc.
One of the benefits of digital magazines, however, is huge fall in cost vs. printed publications. Audits are expensive, so I can understand that publishers would question the value for a digital title. Additionally the lack of BPA-audited competition from other pan-European publications means that the penalty for dropping the audit is significantly reduced. It will remain to be seen if the lack of an audit significantly reduces the amount that advertisers will pay.

Sneak peak at a draft of EPN's new layout

October 15th, 2010

With EPN switching to 100% digital distribution, it was obvious that the layout had to change. We’ve seen a draft of the new layout, which seems to do a great job of making the publication very readable on-screen, without the need for zooming in and out.
The new layout uses 3 columns per page, and the screenshots below show the publication laid out as spreads.

EPN confirms move to all-digital distribution in 2011

October 15th, 2010

It’s not been much of a secret, and with the release of the media pack it’s now official – EPN will drop all print distribution in 2011. The title will follow EDN Europe to all digital distribution, reflecting the inability of most publishers to be able to make sufficient money to support the print and postage costs associated with a pan-European title.
EPN will also see a drop in total circulation from 50000 to an estimated 30000 in January 2011 – and the figure of 30K relies on Reed persuading 12000 readers to switch from print to digital.
We’re now left with just one general electronics publications offering print distribution on a pan-European basis: EE Times Europe. Surprisingly, however, more focussed publications seem able to make ends meet, despite having a smaller advertising base to support them: the three power titles and Embedded Control Europe. Although they clearly benefit from relatively small circulations, when publications such as EDN Europe switch to all-digital distribution, the falls in registered readers have taken them to a similar scale of distribution as the vertical titles.
What does this mean? Perhaps against all the odds, EE Times Europe has been left as the “last man standing”. It’s obvious to me that – in Europe at least – many marketing managers believe that print is more effective than online: they make this abundantly clear when they talk about the value of print and online PR coverage. So presumably EE Times should see a significant boost to advertising revenue. It will be interesting to see if they can capture more advertising revenue and make the pan-European print product a profitable business.

Nick Walker moves to Penton, EPN joins John Waddell and will go digital

September 10th, 2010

Nick Walker is moving from his role as advertising manager at EPN to Penton Media, taking over from Alastair Swift at the end of this year. This follows his recent appointment as UK rep for Elektronik Information. John Waddell will take over from Nick, adding responsibility for EPN to his current role selling EDN Europe.
I’m not surprised that this has happened. The reduction in advertising spend means that it makes sense to combine sales for sister publications such as EDN Europe and EPN. On the other side, Nick gets to sell Penton’s US titles over here, which should provide him with some decent business.
It’s also pretty clear that EPN will only be distributed as a digital title from January 2011. This follows EDN Europe’s move to all-digital circulation at the beginning of this year. I’ll be watching closely to see whether this is a great move by Reed’s European titles, leading the way to digital distribution for all titles, or whether it proves to be an unsustainable cost-cutting measure. Personally I believe digital titles have a great future, and the publications that are prepared to invest in the technology at an early stage will have a long-term competitive advantage.

EPN drops circulation to 50K

January 2nd, 2010

Reed has reduced the circulation of EPN from 60K to 50K. The magazine still retains a large print distribution of 32K, whilst 18K readers receive the digital version. E-mail newsletters circulation has also dropped slightly from 20K to 17K in the latest media pack. That magazine retains its BPA audit, and therefore continues to be the European electronics title with the highest audited circulation. Given the challenges faced by the whole market, and recent cutbacks at Reed, the fall in circulation is not surprising although it would have been nice if more readers could be convinced to take the digital issue, rather than dropping off the circulation.

EPN to launch new multi-language blogs

November 26th, 2009

Hot on the heels of the announcement that Reed is getting out of the French language electronics market, the Paris-based publisher has announced that it will launch two new EPN blogs covering industrial automation and automotive electronics. Both topics will be covered by blogs in English and German.

The move into German-language content is interesting, and appears to be somewhat opportunistic as the blogger for both topics will be the excellent Marisa Robles Consee, who can write excellent English and German articles.

It will be interesting to see if this is the start of a more determined foray into the overcrowded German market, or if it turns out to simply be a 1-off to take advantage of great editorial talent. Either way, it’s good to see that EPN continues to recruit bloggers that can match the very high standard of the existing Distribution and RF blogs.

Reed makes dramatic cutbacks in Europe

November 22nd, 2009

Reed has decided to close EPE and EPN France, as well as switching EDN Europe to an all-digital circulation. I’ve written separate posts on each of the titles, but the extent of these cutbacks is shocking. It’s now time for new online titles with low-cost business models to launch: all these publications were able to generate a significant advertising revenue that would no doubt could be profitable for a different set-up.

At Napier we’ve seen the IT industry transformed with great online publications that generate great traffic and strong revenue. I hope there are entrepreneurial editors who can make the same thing happen in the European electronics media.

EPN France to close

November 22nd, 2009

Reed has decided to close EPN France at the end of this year, despite the merger of Electronique and Electronique International from the beginning of 2010. This leaves just one major French publication. The EPN France website will also close at the end of 2009. The news was also announced at the same time Reed said they would distribute EDN Europe only as a digital title from January 2010.

I’m amazed that Reed feel they can’t make money with one of just two French titles. Although the German electronics market is somewhat larger than the French market, the vast disparity between the number of publications in each market makes no sense.

At Napier we saw a similar collapse in the French IT print media, but this resulted in a number of new online publications. The electronics market has yet to see many online titles driven by “real” editorial content (rather than simply taking press release content). It will be interesting to see if online electronics sites are launched to create new vehicles to reach French engineers: I’d certainly back any new launches as it seems any reasonable site would be almost guaranteed to succeed!

Editor interview - Caroline Hayes, EPN

September 24th, 2009

Didn’t product books die out years ago?
Engineers have always been interested in finding out about new products. Look at the amount of pages that news and other titles give to new products. At EPN, we have made new products our speciality! It’s what we do best and so we focus on delivering new products from around the world to readers across Europe. The large amount of responses we receive to ‘bingo’ numbers via the web on each story supports this approach of give the people what they want!

What does a magazine deliver to engineers that they can’t find when searching the web?
Magazine editors are the ultimate spam filter! We choose the products that are of interest, that take the technology up a notch or which are truly new and different. The beauty of a magazine is that sometimes you didn’t know you are looking for something until you see it in the pages of EPN! It is also impartial and measured information about products, not the marketing department’s idea of a good story, which can be reproduced on some online sites churning out content. Editor’s ask questions on behalf of their readers, i.e. engineers, to make editorial particularly pertinent to their daily working lives; again, you won’t find that on a company’s website.

How do you balance your time between writing for the print publication and writing for epn-online.com?
Product stories that appear in the magazine also appear online so most of my time is spent writing these. I write some online-only product stories too. I also write some content for the online section, Industry News. These are news stories about a new Alliance or Industry body; a merger/acquisition or technology collaboration. However, EPN is all about products, so while these stories are of interest to engineers there is no product in them and are not as prominent on the homepage as Top Products. I conduct an Interview of the Week, another online feature, occasionally. This is a Q&A with C-level executives or technology experts; although I can only claim to dabble – Mick Elliott is the man for probing questions!

In similar industries such as IT, independent blogs have become a significant medium. Yet in electronics there are few independent blogs, with most blogs part of the online presence of a large publication. Why do you think electronics is different?
I must confess I hadn’t thought of the electronics industry being different. Writers become associated with a target audience. National newspapers have blogs of their columnists which are accessed through the newspaper’s home page. Perhaps with IT, blogs are opinion-pieces about whether a new OS is any good or more corporate news with what Google or Facebook is up to. Maybe electronics journalists aren’t as opinionated as IT ones! The audience is different. Engineers don’t get het up about whether one FPGA is more stylish, they clinically compare attributes and make informed choices. The electronics industry seems to have ploughed its own farrow, reporting intelligently via blogs on magazine homepages. At the risk of sounding immodest, EPN has two of the most qualified in their field bloggers, Mick Elliott reporting on distribution and Helen Duncan reporting on all things RF and Wireless – their posts are certainly independent!

What changes do you expect to see over the next three years in the European electronics media?
You are not the first to have asked! At the risk of disappointing you, I cannot prophesise a paperless office with online or digital editions soon. A few companies seem to value appearing in print above all else, so, I am not convinced that print will disappear by the time of the London Olympics! Maybe in another five to 10 years, when all the graduates today who are more web-dependent for information sources are in engineering jobs, the emphasis for content delivery will change.
However, I may be like the Hollywood director who dismissed Fred Astaire’s audition with the words, “Can’t sing, can’t act, can dance a little”! The real crux of your question is that no-one, if they are honest, knows what will be most popular and effective for everyone……

What is the one thing you’d like to change about the way companies do PR in the electronics industry?
You’re going to limit me to one? ! OK, use someone who knows about publishing AND electronics. A knowledge of both will eliminate the following sins: putting management-speak or eight words instead of one in a presentation/press release; suggesting meetings without thinking what will the editor get out of this? (A story, should be the answer, not a cup of tea and a chat!); sending a press release containing all the information, and an image with the highlights superimposed on it – trust me, I’ll know to mention that it consumes only 8µA in sleep mode
And that’s me being restrained!

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, when you’re not writing about electronics?
Horse-riding. I live in London, but there are some stables nearby and when hacking across the lower fields, you would never guess that half of London was racing to get to the other side of London, a few feet away! When I go away with work or family, I always try and book up a horse-ride – you see nature differently on the back of a horse!

What’s your favourite gadget?
I am very attached to my Blackberry, but it’s a bit like chocolate – I have to lock it away sometimes!
Is a microwave a gadget?!
I might have said sat-nav, but I have had a few arguments with it lately when it takes me in a circle or the long way round!
Personal DVD players keep the kids quiet on journey which makes them worth their weight in gold!
Years ago, I had a solar-powered calculator that converted metric to imperial measures and Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa – that was invaluable! It’s probably an iPhone app now. I wish there was a portable barcode reader that could convert the world’s currencies in real-time so that I could confirm that it really is a bargain!

Electronique and Electronique International to merge

September 10th, 2009

Electronique and Electronique International, which already share the same Electronique.biz website, are to merge into a single print publication in January 2010. I’d expect this to be a very strong title exerting powerful influence over electronics engineers in France. Plans for the merged publication are being developed: check back at Napier News to be first to find out what happens!
From a personal point of view, it’s disappointing that the French market is going to be served by just two main titles: the new merged title and EPN France, but the costs of publishing print titles in France just seem too high to support a strong B2B press. A couple of years ago, the IT industry print press contracted significantly, which lead to a number of online publications being launched: many by the editors who used to write for the print titles. It would be great to have strong, competitive online media that covers electronics for the French market, and I hope that some people see this as an opportunity.

EPN launches RF and Wireless blog

July 8th, 2009

EPN has launched its second blog – the RF & Wireless Blog. The blog aims to provide daily posts on the world of RF/Microwave & Wireless components, technology, systems, standards, applications and events from a European perspective and is written by RF specialist Helen Duncan.

If the RF & Wireless Blog can match the quality of EPN’s first blog, Mike Elliott’s must-read EPN Distiblog, then the site will definitely have another winner!

EPN launches contextual adverts

June 17th, 2009

EPN has gone a little Google-esque with their new contextual adverts. Rather like Google AdWords that are run on many different sites in their “content network”, you can define keywords that will trigger display of your advert. Unlike Google, however, you know that the chance of inappropriately triggering an advert is minimal, as you not only know on which site the advert will appear, but you can even restrict the channels on EPN in which the advert is active. This is going to be a boon to advertisers – for example the manufacturers of power supplies that have ads for “AC/DC” supplies running on rock music websites!
Unlike Google, however, the adverts are pay-per-impression, rather than pay-per-click. Hopefully this will come in the future, and presumably if this happens EPN would highlight the very targeted nature of the traffic to their website to justify higher CPCs than Google.

Editor interview - Mike Green

March 5th, 2009

You were editor of EPN, the largest circulation electronics title in Europe, and you decided to leave. What could be better than editing EPN?
EPN was great to work on, but after nearly 9 years with the RBI publishing group (a great deal of that time working on EPN), a change of scene was long overdue. Also being managing editor meant I really had a struggle on my hands to make time for writing articles that interested me. Too often you tend to just get tied down with all the admin and political stuff. Working on ECN and Wireless Design I get to write a lot more about the issues affecting the European market and that is much more fulfilling.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, when you’re not writing about electronics?
Well as you know I have had a couple of books published, and so this has been a quite a big part of my life over the last 4 years or so. I have also been studying at Cardiff’s Art College, and have just completed the first stage of a degree in fine art. I love travelling, doing a variety of sports, and all the usual socialising stuff. I also follow the rugby, but being Welsh that is mandatory.

Do you prefer writing books to editing magazines?
I think they are both pretty good really. All of us in the electronics press like to have a little bit of a moan now and again, but in reality it’s a pretty good way to earn a crust. There aren’t many occupations that allow you to have such varied work. Meeting people doing cutting edge research, learning about new innovations, getting to speak to the industry’s real decision makers, and then being given a platform on which to voice your opinions about all this sure beats the monotony that a lot of my friends have to put up within their workspace. Books are a bit different. Obviously they are far bigger projects to embark upon, so they take a lot of leg work, and the process can be frustrating at times, but the rewards of getting something into the bookshops make it well worthwhile.

What are your plans for your next book?
Well, actually I am currently working on a third book, which looks at the relationship between art and science. It looks how these two subjects have interacted over the centuries; from the Quatrocento through the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods right up to the modern day.

Your books are only available in print, whereas you’re the European editor for Wireless Design and ECN, which have launched digital-only titles here. So what is the future – print or online?
For most of the time I was with EPN the main focus was on print, and though later on there was an increasing emphasis on web-based offerings, it was still the paper version that made up the majority of the readership. I think that there should be room for both print and digital. The editions of ECN and Wireless Design which are emailed to the readership here in Europe have a number of advantages. They are easier to search through, they can be archived, and they have less of an environmental impact. Also there is a lot more room to develop new ideas in terms of advertising. To complement this web-based editorial services are obviously far more immediate, and allow readers to get involved (in terms of commenting on blogs, etc). I still personally enjoy getting print magazines through the post, and I think a lot of other people feel the same, but it seems likely that the emerging generation of engineers and tech management will prefer digital and on-line publishing.

Why do you think people would read a digital magazine like Wireless Design Europe when there are competitors available in print?
I would say it is not so much a matter of how they get it, but more what they get. As Engineers want editorial that can help them in doing their job, what source that comes from is not something they worry about. Also, as mentioned, digital editions have several added convenience factors.

What is the one thing you’d like to change about the way companies do PR in the electronics industry?
I have been dealing with the PR community for a long time now, and for the most part have had good experiences. I think, like most journalists, my biggest pet peeves would be when deadlines aren’t kept on material (although, to be fair, this is usually more down to the company being represented rather than the PR firm themselves) and when requests for information or interviews aren’t responded to in a timely manner. Another one, that I know a lot of my colleagues would agree with, is that firms often think in terms of just ticking boxes. For example, a PR manager will make a big thing about getting as many editors to meet with them at a show even if they have nothing new to say at that time. It means they can go to their bosses and show nice statistics and metrics with which to gage their success, but in reality it is just counterproductive. If you ‘cry wolf’ too many times, people won’t want to know any more.

As you are now writing for a number of titles, does this let you be more focussed on the technologies that interest you?
Yes, I would say so. ECN has a broad based editorial remit, but I really tend to concentrate on the technologies and application areas that are of particular relevance to Europe, or where European companies are leading the innovation. With Wireless Design it is great to be involved in a telecom-based publication again, as it is still a really interesting field, with plenty to write about.

What’s your favourite gadget?
It’s a little ironic I know, but I am still a bit of a Luddite at heart really. I am a lot more enthused by technological advance that can improve healthcare, enhance vehicle safety, or provide us with sustainable energy resources, than what is currently on sale in the high street shops. I’m not one of these people who just buys up any new consumer device on a whim, I really have to see the value in it first. But I think that having an element of scepticism is a good thing sometimes, as you can give an objective view of whether the technologies being touted are actually going to make people’s lives better. While at magazines like EPN, Telecom-Plus, and Hyperelectronics I had to sit through quite a lot of PowerPoint presentations where it was hard to see what real benefit would be gained, companies were trying to solve problems that were not there in the first place. Anyway, I guess my MP3 is the gadget that I get most use out of, though it is getting a bit battered now.

EPN to shrink

February 25th, 2009

In a move that presumably helps reduce costs, EPN and EPN France will shrink by 0.5cm in width and 1.5cm in height. The first issues of the new format will be the April issue of EPN and the April/May issue of EPN France.

Caroline Hayes appointed editor of EPN

August 1st, 2008

Caroline Hayes, the well known and popular editor of EPD, has been appointed as the new editor of EPN, moving to her new role on 29th September. Caroline will replace Mike Green, who did a wonderful job developing EPN, proving that [not all] product books are dead. Mick Elliott will be acting editor until Caroline joins the publication.

There are reletively few editors currently writing in the UK electronics market who could have taken on such a role, so this appointment must be regarded as a very positive achievement for Reed (publishers of EPN). The loss of Caroline must also be a disappointment for EPD, particuarly given the work done to enhance the magazine’s circulation and audit. I will be very interested to see who IML selects as the next editor of EPD. I’d personally like to see an experienced editor with technical expertise move into the electronics sector from another market, rather than a continuation of an editor merry-go-round. Growing the pool of editorial talent in our industry must be good, and CIE has proved that it can be done successfully with the appointment of Neil Tyler. Keep checking Napier News to make sure you are one of the first to know when the appointment is made.

All change at EPN

June 27th, 2008

Mike Green will be leaving his role as editor of EPN, leaving Reed looking for a replacement (although we understand an announcement is imminent). Mike wanted to concentrate on his career as an author and other freelance projects, although he will continue to freelance for the title.

EPN recently recruited industry veteran Mick Elliot to cover distribution and Test & Measurement, as well as to write some of the magazine’s supplements. If EPN can recruit a similar figure as editor, the future of the title should be rosy.

To gossip about who might take over, send me an email!

Wolfgang to leave EPN

May 1st, 2008

It has been announced that Wolfgang Patelay is leaving EPN to write for CMP. He’ll be editing one of the online DesignLines publications, as well as contributing to EE Times. Mike Green is now left to edit EPN on his own, and will have to pursue his painting and book writing careers in even less spare time, although we’re sure that the EPN editorial team will soon be strengthened.

New reader enquiry service for EPN France

March 26th, 2008

EPN France has moved to a similar reader inquiry service to its big brother, EPN. Readers will be able to access data sheets directly from the website, rather than submitting a request and waiting for a data sheet to be sent that in practice often never arrived from teh supplier.

Of course reader inquiry systems are struggling to survive as most engineers will go directly to the manufacture’s website. But leads are hugely valuable: in fact I believe marketing managers in electronics often underestimate their value. Any system that can deliver new leads must be a good thing, and I hope that readers will value and use the EPN system.

Tony Johnson

February 29th, 2008

We were extremely saddened to hear of Tony Johnson’s death during Embedded World. Tony launched EPN in 1972, creating the Pan-European electronics press. During his time at both CMP and Reed, he continued to help create magazines that influence the way designers think and we’d like to pass on our condolences to his family.

Julien Happich leaves EPN

February 11th, 2008

Julien Happich, who has spent 10 years working for EPN has annoucned that he will leave the magazine on 15th February to “take a year off in order to pursue other interests”. We’re sure that – after such a long time at the title – a change is something that is very much deserved. Everyone at Napier would like to wish Julien a very good year, and we all hope to see him come back to the industry next year.

Mike Green to lecture at Royal Society

January 28th, 2008

Mike Green, editor of EPN, will give a lunchtime lecture on Friday 14th March at the Royal Society, London. the lecture will be based on Mike’s popular first book, The Nearly Men, and will decribe the rivalries, tales of treachery and acts of deceit behind the inventions and scientific discoveries which defined the modern age. We loved Mike’s book, and would strongly recommend attending the lecture. Mike’s next book, about the conflict between religion and science will be published later this year.

EPN strengthens US representation

January 15th, 2008

JAS Technical Media, the US representatives for EPN has strengthened its team with the addition of Aimee Kalnoskas. Her fabulous background, including Editor-in-Chief at ECN Magazine and Strategic Editorial Director at Wireless Design & Development will be a huge asset to JAS.

EPN launches new reader enquiry service

August 21st, 2007

EPN has launche a service that will allow you to access data sheets that relate to stories on the the website or in the magazine. EPN aims to link you (after a straightforward registration process) to the data on the manufacturer’s website – something that we believe is much better for the manufacturer than magazine sites that try to keep the reader locked within their site. The obvious downside is the challenge of ensuring the links are maintained: a problem that will only grow as the content grows over time. We’d really like to see this system working, with more magazines working harder to drive users to suppliers’ own websites, and will be reporting back on how well the EPN site is working.

EPN to judge passive/electromech Elektra awards

July 5th, 2007

In a move that will help give more pan-European credibility to Reed’s Elektra awards, EPN will be responsible for choosing the short list and the eventual winner in the Best Passive/Electromechanical Component category. The judging of this award will be by a panel of EPN editors:

Mike Green, Editor-in-Chief EPN
Julien Happich, Editor EPN & Online Editor
Wolfgang Patelay, EPN’s German Correspondent
Alain Dieul, Editor EPN France
Mcallight Liu, EPN’s Chinese Correspondent
Aimee Kalnoskas EPN’s US Correspondent

This has got to be a good move, as the awards have been somewhat UK-focussed, with Electronics Weekly managing the judging process, and we hope that EPN will continue to be involved in the future.

How effective is print?

November 20th, 2006

CIE to become EPN France

November 20th, 2006

Reed is to re-brand CIE (Composants Instrumentation Electroniques) “EPN France” from January 2007. The change will not extend much beyond the name of the magazine, and is clearly driven by the desire to present a familiar brand to advertisers based outside of France. The website will also reflect the name change, with www.epn-online.fr the main URL. This move will make it a little easier to sell CIE outside of France, particularly in the USA, and may help increase market share slightly for the title, but in reality is likely to have a negligible impact for marketers that know and understand the French electronics market.

Peelback Ads now Available on www.epn-online.com

September 19th, 2006

EPN Online is claiming that “far more news and products loaded up on a more frequent basis” has meant that site traffic “has rocketed!” They are also promising to soon have blogs and wikipedia added in the near future. Obviously much of this content will be driven from the other REG titles, but these moves sound positive (we’ll forgive them the over-excitement about their site traffic!).

As a further service, they have also announced the availability of peelback ads: great for charging high CPMs. We just hope the focus is on more quality content, and these ads are not overused: it would be a pity to drive users away with too many intrusive ads.

EPN launches distribution guide

January 20th, 2006

In March, EPN will launch a new distribution guide, trying to help readers navigate the seemingly infinite agreements between component manufacturers and distributors. The first guide will appear in the March issue, and by focussing on a single product category each month, they hope to produce a manageable guide. Want to know more about channel marketing in the European electronics market? Contact Napier.

EPN offers something for free

July 18th, 2005

EPN "re-balances" and reduces rate card

June 7th, 2005

Reed has made several changes to EPN, and here’s our brief overview of what’s happening:

– Entire subscriber base will be re-qualified every 2 years (rather than every 3). GOOD! We shouldn’t really accept qualification every 3 years on a title like EPN.
– Circulation overlap between EPN and CIE reduced. GOOD! But more openness about circulation overlaps would be better.
– Total print circulation to reduce from 70K to 65K. This probably won’t be seen as a big deal by most advertisers, if the quality of circulation improves. BUT EPN’s definition of “print” includes the digital version of the magazine, so today only about 58K copies are actually in print, with the remaining 7K copies distributed as digital versions of the magazine.
– Design & Development job functions will account for 90% of EPN’s readership by the end of the year (up from 58% today). Most clients will welcome this, and it represents an increase in the design and development circulation from 40600 to 58500.
– The rate card rates will be reduced by 21% for the Euro rate card, and 17% for the US$ rate card. Reductions in rates are always good, but it remains to be seen if the change in the rate card will have a corresponding effect on the rates that can be achieved in a negotiation.

EPN summarises the problems faced by publishers in our industry very well, “…lower print budgets allocated to Europe plus a perception that print budgets need to be squeezed to make room for online budgets.” We think that these moves are a positive response that also recongise that engineers still want to receive – and read – printed magazines.

There are also a number of enhancements to EPN’s online activity that we will cover in a separate story.

EPN enhances online offering

June 7th, 2005

EPN is upgrading its online activities. They will have a weekly news feed, and will have some stories that are exclusive to the website (I guess this means that the web will cover more than the print publication – something already done by many other titles). “Deep links” direct to datasheets on manufacturers’ and distributors’ websites will be introduced – something that may become a nightmare as these companies re-design their web navigation over time.

But the most interesting move is the launch of German-language content, with a series of e-newsletters sent to readers of both EPN and EDN Europe. With strong email newsletters already available from German publications, it will be interesting to see how successful EPN can be in this crowded market.

Not reading EPN? Why not?

January 19th, 2005

UK is magnet for European editors

December 21st, 2004

EPN digital edition - clarification

November 28th, 2004

We have received some clarification from Reed about the distribution of EPN. The circulation did include non-EPN subscribers, using the databases from the now-closed titles PCIM and Elektronik Revue as well as CIE. The confusion about the circulation came from the fact that Redd also distributed the electronic version to all print subscribers, but didn’t tell anyone that they were going to do this! The details we received from Reed are given below:

——————————————————–

EPN October 04 – the digital edition went to a 15K bonus circulation – non EPN subscribers – the lists was based on the database from PCIM Europe (Europe), Elektronik Revue (Germany) and CIE (France), deduplicated with the existing EPN reader database.

EPN November 04 – the digital edition went to

– 4191 EPN subscribers who did opt for the digital edition – the November issue was the first issue distributed to the EPN subscribers.

– all other EPN subscribers who did not opt for the digital edition – the goal was to show them the new product & to increase the impact of our electronica issue.

– 20000 bonus distribution based on the same database used for the bonus distribution (PCIM Europe, Elektronik Revue, CIE) – again, this were people who were not subscribed to EPN

– 53279 digital copies distributed in total

Adding the 10K show copies for November, we distributed the November issue on 129K copies (regular print copy, show copies, digital edition).

EPN launches medical conference

November 28th, 2004

EPN launches digital edition

November 18th, 2004

EPN has launched its digital edition with the November issue, aiming to replicate the success of the launch of the electronic version of Electronics Weekly – another Reed title. The magazine uses the same technology from Olive Software, which we believe offers the best balance of the trade-offs that are inevitably associated with online versions of magazines. Unlike Electronics Weekly, you have to decide to receive either the electronic or printed version – EPN doesn’t let you have both! The electronic version for November, however, also included the electronica company profile supplement, and even the Kontron loose insert for November was available electronically!

The launch of the electronic version included distribution of 20,000 copies to people in the Reed database – presumably mostly existing EPN readers. Whilst it is great to see Reed making a real commitment to delivering an online version of the magazine, the November circulation claims perhaps included quite a few readers receiving both online and printed copies. To be fair, Reed didn’t try to hide this, and a good agency or marcom manager should have spotted it. Let’s face it 100 000 circulation across Europe is still pretty impressive!

EPN running brand study in December

October 19th, 2004

Mardev to get access to EPN and EDN databases

October 1st, 2004

EPN asks readers to go digital

August 31st, 2004

August 24th, 2004

by Admin

Electronics weekly | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about Electronics Weekly up to December 2018.

Electronics Weekly Reveal Results for Advertising Effectiveness Study

November 23rd, 2018

In September 2018, Electronics Weekly completed an advertising effectiveness study to discover whether print really is a vital part of the media mix for advertisements and news.

Interestingly, the results has allowed Electronics Weekly to prove that print is a vital part of the media mix.

The study revealed that readers spent an average time of 23 minutes reading a print version of Electronics Weekly; considerably higher than the time people spent in online sessions. Further, 60% of readers visited an advertiser’s website after seeing it in print, and 49% discussed a print ad with someone else in their company.

The results also disclosed that 36% of readers referred the print version of Electronics Weekly to someone else in their company, whilst 32% requested additional information from the advertiser.

Electronics Weekly’s study clearly presents a perspective that print does work for companies; and with the stats given it’s hard to argue that print isn’t providing positive results.

Electronics Weekly BrightSparks Programme is a Huge Success

May 24th, 2018

The BrightSpark programme for 2018 has been declared a huge success, after highlighting the brightest and most talented young electronics engineers in the UK.

Partnering with RS Components and receiving great support from the industry, including HARTING and the IET; Electronics Weekly formed the BrightSpark Programme to celebrate innovative young engineers in the beginning of their careers, and inspire them to become the people behind great innovations in the future.

The BrightSpark programme has received great interest from the industry, with entries up by 25% and page visits up another 2000 compared to last year. The programme featured a high-profile panel full of industry expertise and knowledge, including Peter Hannon managing director at HARTING UK, a client of our our sister company Peter Bush Communications.

Electronics Weekly featured a BrightSparks supplement in their May issue, detailing the awards ceremony hosted on the 3^rd May.

At Napier, we are firm supporters of celebrating success at any stage of your career and it is great to see the industry celebrating the successes of the younger generation. By acknowledging all levels of experience in the industry, Electronics Weekly will encourage more people to choose electronics as their career, as well as inspire current engineers to strive to be the best.

We look forward to seeing how the electronics industry evolves with these talented engineers, and who will be behind the great innovations for the electronics industry in the near future.

Napier attended the Elektra Awards!

January 10th, 2018

Napier recently attended the 2017 Elektra Awards, hosted on 6th December at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.

The awards ceremony was filled with experts from all across the industry, and for the first time at Napier, we decided to host our own table at the ceremony.

Members of our team including Mike Maynard, Chloe Wilcox, Janice Ashton and Freya Ward represented Napier at the awards; and they took great care of our client attendees, which included Natasha Sephton-Pike from Harting Ltd, Alex Price from Vicor, Raffaella Ricci and Neil Campbell from Anritsu and Holly Smart from Premier Farnell.

We also made our mark on the award’s ceremony by presenting our very own RFiD card holders – Napier Themed!

We would like to thank the Electronics Weekly team for a fun-filled night, we’re looking forward to the 2018 Elektra Awards already!

Changes to Electronics Weekly’s editorial team

November 24th, 2017

Big news has been revealed this week by Electronics Weekly.  Josh Brooks who has been with the company for over three years and took on the role as editor in April, has made the decision to leave Metropolis at the end of the current year. Josh has been part of the Metropolis team for over 7 years but has decided to dive into a new challenge at the beginning of 2018, and will be replaced by Clive Couldwell.

Josh Brooks said “It’s been a real privilege to work on Electronics Weekly for the past three years and I am grateful for the warm welcome I’ve had in this industry. I am sure Clive will be an excellent editor for what is a great title. I wish both the industry and team here at Electronics Weekly every success in the future.”

Clive Couldwell currently has the editing role at the sister title AV magazine, and will now take on the role as group editor. This will be a big challenge for Clive but we are sure he will thrive in his new position. Clive has more than three decades of experience, winning awards in print and has had various editorial roles in the electronics industry.

Clive Couldwell said: “I’ve known and admired Electronics Weekly for as long as I’ve been a journalist, so it’s a great honor to join the team and I’m looking forward to working on the title and getting to know the industry better. I hope that my background and portfolio of skills in a range of markets and media will complement what is one of the most experienced teams in the industry.”

Electronics Weekly also plans to recruit a news editor to increase its news output in print and online. Nick Stimpson who currently has the role of managing director of Metropolis Business Media will now become publisher of Electronics Weekly and will assist running the title alongside Clive Couldwell and commercial Director Steve Ray.

Nick has stated that: “Clive is a talented editor who has developed and launched many new products across AV Magazine’s portfolio in his time on the title. He will be a great addition to Electronics Weekly’s editorial team and I look forward to working with him in his new role. I’d also like to thank Josh for his contribution at Metropolis over the past seven years and wish him all the best for the next stage in his career.”

At Napier we are wishing everyone the best of luck in their new job roles and future careers. It’s exciting to see Electronics Weekly making changes to their editorial team and we can’t wait to see what direction the title takes.

Electronics Weekly launches guide to digital advertising

August 12th, 2017

Electronics Weekly has created a white paper titled The EW Guide to the Digital Galaxy, which aims to answer questions such as:

• How do I get better banner performance and ROI without spending more money?
• What are the top performing campaigns doing to get great consistent results?
• What are the mistakes I need to avoid?
• Which banner unit performs better & what should I invest in?
• What can I expect & what are the benchmarks?
• Should I be more focused on mobile?
• How do I assess the effectiveness of a banner campaign?
• Where do I start?

The guide was actually developed from a presentation Steve Ray, commercial manager at Electronics Weekly, gave at a Napier lunch event, and so we know how insightful and useful this white paper will be for marketers. Although the analysis focusses on the electronics industry, the conclusions will be valuable to marketers in any B2B technology sector.

The information is based on deep and wide statistical analysis from over two years of campaign and audience data. It includes case studies, valuable advice & tips, seasonal trends, campaign analysis, ad unit analysis, top/bottom performance trends and much more. The white paper is available to .

Electronics Weekly Announces the Launch of EW TV

August 10, 2017

Electronics Weekly has announced the launch of a new reader and advertising service EW TV. The publication has previously prided themselves on the video content they host on electronicsweekly.com, and has decided to take this one step further, creating a dedicated TV channel to host all video.

The launch comes after Cisco pronounced that by 2021, IP video traffic will account for 89% of all consumer internet traffic, which is up from 73% in 2016. Additionally, from 2016 to 2021 CAGR will be 21% in Petabytes per month, in the B2B space alone. As a publication, which is continually innovating, and keeping ahead of the curve, Electronics Weekly are embracing the new-found importance of video, as a way to engage and create more opportunities for their audience.

Electronics Weekly has also decided to celebrate their launch across the B2B electronics industry, inviting marketers and businesses to send them a link to their own video, which will be uploaded to EW TV free of charge, subject to the editor’s approval.

Yet, be aware this is a time sensitive offer, as Electronics Weekly will only be accepting video links free of charge until the 30^th September 2017. From the 1^st October 2017, Electronics Weekly will charge to publish video content on their EW TV channel.

Further to this unique opportunity, Electronics Weekly are offering the services of their in-house video team and studio, to help businesses who are unfamiliar with video content embrace this opportunity. Their help includes creating a variety of video content such as corporate videos, product tests, webinars and lead generation programmes.

To find out more information and how Electronics Weekly can help you bring your products and content to life through video, contact steve.ray@metropolis.co.uk

IoT Design Seminar confirmed for 2017

July 19th, 2017

Electronics Weekly is taking advantage of the momentum gathering around IoT, as they follow on from the huge success of their previous IoT Design events, confirming a new IoT Design Seminar for the 6^th December 2017.

The seminar will be situated at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane and is being held on the same day as the prestigious Elektra awards. With previous events finding it hard to gain momentum in the UK, it is good to see that Electronics Weekly are taking advantage of this, and are offering new packages and options to help delegates, sponsors and partners to attend both events on the same day, ensuring they make the most of their time in London.

Electronics Weekly are working hard to ensure they bring value for money, offering packages that allow you to attend both events, as well as including elements which go beyond the day itself by reaching target audiences from a marketing and lead generation perspective across all media platforms before, during and after the events.

This seminar is also taking one step further, offering a new additional sponsored option called ‘Technical Spotlight’ where professionals can present commercial offers to the audience. However, be sure to get in quick, as these slots will be given on a first come first served basis.

With previous successful events hosted by Electronics Weekly, attendees can be assured that this will be a high-quality event which shouldn’t be missed.

But there is no need to worry if you can’t make the seminar, as a supplement will be printed and posted online about IoT Design before the seminar, meaning companies can still have a advertisement and a page of content present in front of the audience.

To find out more about this event, please take a look at the website or call +44 (0)20 8253 8652 for more information.

Electronics Weekly Cuts Frequency and Appoints New Editor

July 3rd, 2017

It’s not a surprise, but it’s still a disappointment that Electronics Weekly today announced that the print (and digital) magazine will be published on a fortnightly, rather than weekly basis, with the change coming in with immediate effect. The publication started sounding out opinion about this idea earlier in the year, and has taken the decision to “ensure the magazine’s long-term future”.

Electronics Weekly will now be published 22 times per year, instead of the 40 issues per year previously. We are promised that although frequency is dropping, there will be an investment in quality, with a commitment to a minimum pagination of 32pp for each issue. Higher-quality paper was also introduced as of the 28 June issue, giving the magazine a thicker (and hopefully more successful) feel.

We’re promised that there will be no change to the digital or events portfolio, nor will the title change from its news-led approach to editorial content, although presumably there will be more analysis and less breaking news, reflecting the fortnightly frequency.

EW also announced that popular and long-serving editor, Richard Wilson, is to step down from the role of editor of the magazine as of 14 July and will take on a consultant editor role. Again this is not a total surprise, and we wish Richard the best in his future role. After many years of working with him, and previously pitching to him (and to be honest being rather intimidated by him in the early years) I will miss the frequent interaction with such a knowledgeable journalist. We’re promised a regular column from Richard, as well as his input into the publication, so he will still be around, hopefully for many years to come.

Josh Brooks, who has been publisher of Electronics Weekly for the past two years, is to move into a combined publisher and editor role. This isn’t quite as strange a move as it might seem: Josh has worked as a journalist and editor for several publications across industries including packaging, commercial printing, property, construction, urban planning and marketing. So he brings a wealth of experience, and I know he also has a huge enthusiasm to learn more about the electronics industry.

Josh told us, “I am greatly looking forward to the new challenge of editing Electronics Weekly. It is a title with a fantastic team, a strong brand and a wonderful heritage. Moreover, it operates in a market that is at the forefront of human endeavour and I am very excited to have the opportunity to cover that market and meet the people driving it forwards.

“Richard will be a very hard act to follow and I am thrilled that he will remain part of the team in his new role. Both I and Metropolis are extremely grateful for his many years of service to Electronics Weekly; and we look forward to working with him in the months and years to come. Equally, I am very much looking forward to working more closely with the fantastic journalists on Electronics Weekly’s editorial team. It’s a privilege to work with such highly-respected writers as Steve Bush, David Manners and Alun Williams, not to mention our many contributors.”

The rest of the editorial team – web editor Alun Williams, technology editor Steve Bush, senior components editor David Manners and production editor Sue Proud – remain in place and are not affected by the change, which is good news, as it means Josh has a strong team who will be able to drive the magazine forward during this change. All of us at Napier wish Richard and the EW team the very best and look forward to the title remaining at the heart of the UK electronics market.

Electronics Weekly Present Real World Insights for A Virtual Universe

May 30th, 2017

A few times a year at Napier we host a lunch for our client’s, and on the 25^th April, we invited Electronics Weekly along to show us their presentation on Real World Insights for a Virtual Universe.

The presentation was a great success and was very educational, giving us an insight into how, where and what we should spend our budget on, to ensure we succeed in targeting our consumers in the digital world.

Electronics Weekly revealed they have been tracking and analysing online performance in detail for nearly 2 years to establish any consistent patterns consumers take, and to provide guidance in how to succeed online.

The presentation disclosed a mixture of findings, but a key discovery is the growth of performance on mobile phones which is perceived as exceptional, as both mobile consumption and delivery has increased, resulting in companies seeing more website visitors through the mobile. Mobile actions have also increased, with many consumer’s researching or buying products through their mobile.

Following on from this, Electronics Weekly revealed that CTR are improving and during the so called ‘quiet months’ there is no change or apparent decline in CTR, meaning there is no real seasonality of CTR, as this is advertising lead, not marketing lead.

This apparent increasing popularity of the ‘Digital Universe’ now means competition is fiercer than ever, and companies must ensure they stay dynamic and evolved, by using creative ideas on integrated platforms, to help stay in touch with their consumers.

Before Electronics Weekly left, they gave us a few more pieces of advice when it comes to approaching the ‘Digital Universe’:

• Set expectations at an achievable and Realistic level
• Creative is more important than ever
• Resist Temptation- Don’t overload the user and cram all products into one email
• Use each platform for its main merits and use appropriate/creative messages
• Be Bold – Test and Innovate

Congratulations to our clients named on the Elektra Awards shortlist

September 9th, 2016

Here at Napier, we are thrilled that several of our clients have been shortlisted for Elektra Awards. As the industry’s largest technology and business awards, we relish the opportunity this event provides for our clients, highlighting the success stories and business achievements our clients have achieved this year.

Our shortlisted clients include Microchip Technology, for their MBLAB Xpress IDE tool, and Vicor, for their Power System Designer tool, who were both shortlisted for the Design Tools and Development software award. Anritsu have also been shortlisted for their product MS2710XA Remote spectrum monitor, for the Test Product of the Year Award, and Premier Farnell have been shortlisted for the Educational Support award. Excitingly, Imagination Technologies have also been shortlisted for the Internet- of-Things product innovation award, for their Creator Ci40 development kit.

The fourteenth annual Elektra Awards will be held on Thursday 1 December 2016, at the Grosvenor House Hotel. The Elektra European Electronics Industry Awards have been established as the best promotional platform to celebrate the achievements of individuals and companies throughout our industry, across the entirety of Europe. This year sees a varied of experts on the panel of judges, from lead technologist of InnovateUK, Andy Sellars, to technical editor of Electronics Weekly, Steve Bush.

We wish all our clients the best of luck and this award ceremony is a great way to celebrate all the successes that have been achieved this year.

Electronics Weekly mulls round table discussions for client campaigns

July 11th, 2016

Although the idea is not a new one, it’s great to see a publisher like Electronics Weekly look at new ways to generate valuable content that will also help drive the revenue they need to remain a successful business. They have floated the idea of  “Peer Panels”: round tables that gather 4-6 key figures from within the industry (this would be business leaders, engineers, senior management, high profile people, specialists and so on) plus a representative from the client to discuss key issues around a selection of key topics.

Set questions will be asked of each panelist, with their answers forming the content.  It seems that initially the discussions will be conducted by email, which makes the idea one that could get off the ground quickly and easily, although Electronics Weekly has also suggested physical meetings and even large virtual round tables via webinars.

It’s an interesting idea, and one that has been very successful in the IT industry, for example. Typically they generate great engaging content, and the answers can be re-used in a range of different media channels. Although there is no public pricing, we’re sure that there will soon be some clients experimenting with the format to see how they can benefit.

The Electronics Weekly Guide to Email Marketing

May 24th, 2016

Reading media information can get boring. They often feel like a collection of rate card pricing and circulation information, with pretty much the same options as every other magazine. Electronics Weekly, however, has done something different.

Rather than just trying to sell their products, the new Electronics Weekly email media pack actually helps you create better campaigns. Using the results of research the publication has conducted, together with useful hints and tips, more than half of this interesting document is about how you can make your campaigns deliver better results. With hints and tips; analysis of the best (and worst) performing campaigns run by Electronics Weekly’s customers; and a guide to email sender reputation, this document is packed full of useful information.

Although we’re sure you will want to download the full email media pack with pricing, Electronics Weekly has allowed Napier to produce a special version that is simply their guide to running the best possible email campaigns. Download your copy of the Electronics Weekly Guide to Email Marketing today.

Electronics Weekly to hold Secure Systems Summit in December

May 23rd, 2016

Electronics Weekly will hold their first Secure Systems Summit in December 2016 at CodeNode in London’s Tech City. Following on from their IoT event a couple of months earlier, it’s clear that the publication is growing an impressive events business.

The event will feature specialists in chip level design, trusted computing, embedded software and app development, who will present security techniques including:

• Authentication
• FPGA secure-boot
• TrustZone
• Partitioning
• Hypervisors
• Biometrics
• Encrypted communications

Elektra Awards 2016 open for entries

April 29th, 2016

The Elektra Awards, which are now in their 14th year are now open for entries. There are a total of 24 awards up for grabs, which are split into the following four categories:

• Business Awards
• Excellence in Design
• Engineers of the Future
• Product Technologies

Entries will be assess by an independent panel of judges and the winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony which will take place on Thursday 1 December 2016 at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane.

Electronics Weekly to Hold IoT Conference in September

April 20th, 2016

Electronics Weekly will hold its second annual IoT conference on 15th September 2016 at Code Node in London. The event theme is Making IoT work for us.

The conference will focus on the following themes:

• Low power wireless standards such as LTE-M, 802.11x Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, LoRa , Thread, NFC.
• Temperature, pressure, humidity, acceleration sensors for monitoring and controlling factories, homes, wearable devices and cars.
• Secure system design with authentication, partitioning and secure boot technology in hardware, software and connectivity protocols to protect data.
• Cloud services for the development of IoT hardware platforms which are functional, secure and easy to use.

There are still speaking slots available: Contact Richard Wilson, editor Electronics Weekly, if you have an idea for a paper to be presented. Alternatively you can take a stand at the exhibition.

The headline sponsor is Keysight Technologies, with Greenhills taking one of the three main sponsor slots: the other two main sponsors are still to be confirmed.

Electronics Weekly returns to the news

December 16th, 2013

I was never convinced by the argument that “no one reads the news in print any more”. Whilst it’s clear that consumption of news has moved online, there has always been a group of readers who prefer their news in print. It’s also clear that whilst the days of cutting and pasting press releases into a print title are over, in practice readers see this as an evolution, not a dramatic change: this is borne out by the fact that the “news” magazines who tried to reposition themselves as “news analysis” publications haven’t been particularly successful. Intelligent comment and analysis didn’t mean that these titles were no longer covering news.

So I was pleased to hear from Steve Ray, publisher of Electronics Weekly, that the redesign planned for the start of next year will see a greater focus on news. In a way it’s going back to EW’s roots. I, for one, really like the new look and hope that EW will continue to be required reading for anyone in the UK electronic components industry.

Elektra Awards 2013 open for entries

May 25th, 2013

The 11th annual Elektra Awards are open for entries.

The deadline for submissions is Friday 28th June 2013 at 5.00pm: despite the tradition of an “Elektra extension“, there is no guarantee that late submissions will be extended.

Changes at Electronics Weekly

April 29th, 2013

As Electronics Weekly continues to settle in to their new home at Metropolis, there have been some changes behind the scenes. Publisher David Bentley has left the company, whilst Steven Ray has joined as Commercial Manager and Emma Mayhew has taken over as Publisher.

How to develop a great home page - the Electronics Weekly way

July 30th, 2012

Electronics Weekly has been tweaking its home page for a while and we’re liking the new look and feel. But how did they decide on what changes to make? Electronics Weekly kindly told us the five main areas that they tried to improve, based upon user comments:

• “Homepage too full and busy, needs to be clearer”
• “Too many items on the Navigation Bar”
• “The quality of search on Electronics Weekly”
• “A greater visibility of Social Media links”
• “Too many adverts”

Of course publishers are limited in what they can do to address users’ concerns: for example Electronics Weekly was quick to point out that adverts are a crucial element of the site, as they pay the wages! However they have refined the number and placement of advertisements on the homepage: I’ll be interested to see how the new layout is viewed by the readers, and whether it has any impact on advertising click-through rates.
It was fascinating to hear what drove the EW redesign, and I’d love to hear similar stories from other publishers.

Elektra Awards 2012 deadline extended

July 10th, 2012

It’s as predictable as summer rain in England: the deadline for the Elektra Awards 2012 has been extended. You now have until 6th August 2012 to complete your entries.

Electronics Weekly sold to Metropolis

June 20th, 2012

Reed Business Information has sold Electronics Weekly to Metropolis, a publisher with a portfolio of consumer, trade and travel titles. As RBI has made no secret of its desire to move away from traditional magazine publishing to paid content and online subscription-based data sales, the fact that a sale has been made is a good thing for the magazine and its team.
It will be interesting to see how Electronics Weekly develops under new ownership. I’m sure that other than the commute to work changing to arrive in Croydon, Electronics Weekly will continue with few changes early in the relationship. In the longer term, I’ll be fascinated to see how the new owners develop EW – will the try to reinvigorate the print edition? What can they learn from EW to enhance their existing portfolio of titles?
The sale of EW was inevitable, and it is great to see that there is a publisher who recognised the value of the title. I’m looking forward to seeing what the new owners can do to make EW even better in the future.

Electronics Weekly launches "Noticeboard"

May 25th, 2012

Electronics Weekly has just announced their “Noticeboard” – a news feed that allows companies to post their news direct to the Electronics Weekly website, providing they pay for the privilege. I suspect there will be pretty polarised views on this move: people might see it as a great opportunity for advertorial, a new source of content for the site, a disappointing move that devalues the real editorial on the website or a stream of advertising spam.
I’d expect most companies to sign up for the service to benefit from Electronics Weekly’s SEO and some promotion on the site and within emails. The value, however, will be pretty dependent upon the noise in the newsfeed: ironically the less successful the noticeboard, and therefore fewer posts it receives, the better the value to anyone paying for the service. it could only take a couple of companies posting high volumes of content to drown out those posting only a small number of items a month. In fact it’s even worse than this: with the reverse chronological ordering and only two stories on the home page promotion, it just takes two other users to post immediately after you add some content for the benefit of home page promotion to vanish from the package for that item.
I was very disappointed that on the news page Electronics Weekly has chosen not to reveal that the content is all paid-for. Letting people think it’s a valid editorial news feed simply devalues the high-quality editorial on the rest of the page. The Supplier Ecosystem page also doesn’t highlight that fact that these stories are effectively advertising, but I guess that as this is a paid-for page anyway I shouldn’t get too upset. At least I can take comfort in the fact that they do highlight the Noticeboard as “Sponsored Content” on the home page.
Is the Noticeboard a good idea? Perhaps. You get distribution of content, and this clearly has a value, although it will depend upon the traffic that is delivered to your posts. Whether it’s a good idea for Electronics Weekly to hand over more of the site to advertisers, allowing at the same time the line between editorial and advertising to become a little more blurred, I’m less sure. I want publishers to make money – it’s the only way to ensure a vibrant European media – but at the same time this feels like a decision that prioritises short-term revenue over long-term value to the reader.

All About Test adds Product Focus to site

January 25th, 2012

One of the downsides of online publications is that they tend to focus on a stream of news, failing to provide the context you might get in an in-depth print article. Electronics Weekly is a good example of a site that has produced some excellent overview pages – such as their guide to LEDs, and I was delighted to see that All About Test has begun to do something similar for the test market. The first product focus looks at power analysers, and is also available on the German site.

Publisher Interview - David Wilson, Electronics Weekly

July 25th, 2011

David Wilson has recently taken over as the publisher of Electronics Weekly, and I was delighted to get the opportunity to talk to him about the state of the electronics publishing industry and his plans for the future. In this interview he defends the refusal of Electronics Weekly to provide PR coverage based on advertising spend, explains that Embedded Live was delayed to give EW time to build a great show next year and drops hints that EW is working on an iPad app:

You’ve worked at Electronics Weekly before – what’s it like to be back?
It’s great to be back working with Richard Wilson, and the team. I’ve kept an eye on the brand over the last few years so it feels as though I’ve never been away!

In your current role you are the publisher of New Scientist and Electronics Weekly – how does your job differ between the two titles?
Fortunately both brands have 50+ year heritage and very loyal readers/users. New Scientist is a consumer brand whereas Electronics Weekly is the bible of one market. The job is very similar but with different objectives.

New Scientist gets significant revenue from subscriptions and newsstand sales, whereas Electronics Weekly is a controlled circulation title. What impact does this have on your role?
The key difference is the commercial strategy- Two thirds of New Scientist revenues come from users and this creates a different set of challenges.

With advertisers effectively paying the salary of editors working on a controlled circulation title, does this mean that editors can’t be completely independent?
No..I can’t speak for all CC titles but EW has always prided itself on it’s impartial and considered view of the marketplace .Independence and trust are the key reasons our readers give for reading EW. I see no difference in the approach of the EW editors to that of New Scientist.

Does Electronics Weekly consciously aim to give more editorial coverage to advertisers than non-advertisers?
No-our commercial and editorial strategy are not aligned in this way.

What is your view of companies that don’t advertise, but expect their PR to be covered?
Electronics is a competitive market and companies have a number of choices when it comes to advertising. I’m pleased that companies supply their PR as this demonstrates that they understand the strength of our audience-.I just feel sorry that they’re missing out on all the sales leads we could be supply them!

Clearly you believe print has a future, and keep investing in the print version of Electronics Weekly. Do you ever see the day when there will be no print magazine?
We are currently investing in the print magazine and the quality of the audience it reaches for advertisers. I can see a day when there is no magazine but only when the appetite for print has diminished.

Digital versions of the Electronics Weekly have the same layout as the print version. Do you think that this is a barrier to getting more people to read the digital title?
It is important to offer both options to provide choice to the reader. Moving forward, we have plans to extend the digital content beyond the magazine using video and graphics.

Do you think it will make sense to have a “tablet format” version of the magazine in the future?
Absolutely-watch this space.

Electronics Weekly has taken over Embedded Live (ESC UK). You chose to postpone the event this year. Why did you think Embedded Live would be more successful in 2012 if there wasn’t a show in 2011?
My team are working with UBM to deliver the best possible experience for visitors and exhibitors. Unfortunately we didn’t have the lead time this year and we weren’t prepared to sacrifice the quality of the show.

You’ve got a significant amount of video content on the website, but it’s not heavily promoted on the home page. In the future, how important do you think video content will be to Electronics Weekly?
Video will be a key part of our online content strategy. We are working on plans for a new platform with additional content at present.

What would you expect to be the most important trend in the European electronics publishing in the next couple of years?
The expansion of digital content.

What do you like to do in your spare time?
I’m a huge sports fan and my wife has just had our first baby……if I’m not asleep you’ll find me at a Leeds united game or England test match.

What is your favorite gadget?
The Ipad as it’s made my life so much easier. What other gadget has a app to time your wife’s contractions whilst your watching the test match in the delivery suite?

Elektra Awards 2013 deadline extended

July 4th, 2011

Continuing the well-established tradition, Electronics Weekly has extended the deadline for entering the Elektra Awards to 15th July. These awards have real value, so if you missed the original deadline, make sure you get your entry submitted within the next couple of weeks!

Embedded Live postponed until 2012

April 21st, 2011

After some very promising announcements, and signs that UK events are picking up with some pretty good attendance at NEW, I was really disappointed to hear confirmation that Electronics Weekly has decided not to run Embedded Live this year. With the transfer of the event to be under EW’s control, the tie-up with ICC media and promises of government support, it sounded as if Embedded Live was on the growth track this year. I understand, however, that the recent restructure of the management after the sale of Computer Weekly has resulted in the review that has resulted in the decision to wait until next year.
Is this good or bad news? On the downside it’s not going to help the already-shaky confidence of potential exhibitors, but in reality the show hasn’t attracted huge numbers of visitors over the last couple of years, so skipping 2011 is not going to disappoint too many engineers who attended previous events. So overall I don’t think that this decision will make it harder for the event to be successful in 2012. However by deciding to hold off for a year to make sure “it’s done right”, EW has really put the pressure on for 2012: a good show will surely be a cause for celebration, but if visitor numbers are disappointing then I can’t see any future for this troubled event.

Vote to decide an Elektra Awards winner

April 16th, 2011

Ever entered an award and been completely bemused by the judges’ decision to name another company as the winner? Well here’s your chance to dust off your Simon Cowell attitude and help select a winner for one of the Elektra Award categories. The product innovation award is decided by votes from readers of EW, and you can have your say by voting for your favourite innovation.

Electronics Weekly takes over Embedded Live

March 9th, 2011

One interesting bit of news from Embedded World was that the UK show, Embedded Live, will now be run solely by Electronics Weekly. Previously it had been a joint venture between EW and EE Times Group.
This is an interesting move. Having offloaded the majority of its European electronics publishing activity, EE Times Group could only make a limited contribution to promoting the event. Electronics Weekly, with its very strong focus on the UK should be more committed to making the event successful. The challenge of getting engineers to attend shows in the UK, however, is a well documented problem. With limited momentum, even EW will have their work cut out to make this event a true success in 2011.
So what should we expect? If the event can show significant growth in visitors and attract more than 2500 attendees, I’d feel confident that there is momentum that will drive the show forward. I’d love there to be a stronger show culture in the UK, so let’s hope EW can pull it off.

How do I get website traffic figures I can trust?

October 31st, 2010

This month I’ve had several different conversations about website traffic stats with publishers. One publisher described their frustration at another who had included the traffic for a book publishing division within their stats. Another asked how they could get people to recognise the large volume of traffic that their site generated, and claimed they were the leading electronics site in their country but still failed to get on the radar of many large advertisers. A third complained that they were the only site in their country to audit traffic, meaning that it was difficult to compare stats on a like-for-like basis with their competitors.
Clearly this is a debate that doesn’t have an easy answer. Let’s have a look at one of the claims that has been made recently – that Radio-Electronics.com is a bigger site that ElectronicsWeekly.com on the basis of the DoubleClick Ad Planner. As always I have a few thoughts on the matter:

• Firstly it’s astounding that Radio-Electronics can make this claim with some credibility. I’m truely impressed at the traffic the site generates, and with this performance it clearly should be on many more ad schedules than it is today.
• The claim is made based upon Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner tool. This means the figures are an estimate. Ad Planner makes it sound like a clever calculation, but their statement that “Traffic statistics are estimated by combining sample user data from various Google products and services and opt-in direct-measured site-centric data. In addition, site owners may opt-in direct measured Google Analytics traffic statistics to provide a more accurate measure of their site traffic.” means that it’s not accurate.
• Radio-Electronics gives Ad Planner access to the site’s Google Analytics data. ElectronicsWeekly.com does use Google analytics, but doesn’t give Ad Planner access. So comparing the data means comparing estimates produced using two different algorithms.
• ElectronicsWeekly.com has quite a lot of other analytics on the site, and uses WebSideStory code (owned by Omniture, which is owned by Adobe), Nielsen//NetRatings and Trovus.
• The Ad Planner stats show Radio-electronics with 120K unique visitors and 340K page views per month as compared with 91K and 320K for Electronics Weekly. This is pretty close for an estimate.
• Alexa, another source of estimated site traffic shows a different story, with ElectronicsWeekly.com significantly ahead of Radio-Electronics, apart from a short time at the beginning of October.
• ElectronicsWeekly.com is audited by the BPA. This should provide the most accurate and unbiased traffic data, and it shows the site achieving 337K pages and 121K unique browsers [users] in June, which is the last month on the most recent audit. It’s not unreasonable to assume that traffic has increased a bit since June.

So what does this all mean? Which site is bigger? Which site is best?
I guess that the first conclusion you can draw is that Radio-electronics.com really is a big site. We all knew that ElectronicsWeekly was generating strong traffic, and clearly Radio-electronics is very much in the same league. We can also say that you can’t directly compare the traffic on the two sites – there simply isn’t a direct comparison that is not based upon an estimate for one or both sites. In fact the only “apples for apples” comparison in all the above data are the Alexa numbers, and these are notoriously approximate. Finally we can say that you probably need to be running a pretty large campaign, or have very specific targeting before you need to worry about which site is bigger – with unique visitors of the order of 100K for both sites, you need to be running a lot of ad impressions before you need to start worrying too much about the site’s reach. Despite the many problems in getting traffic stats, I think I can confidently say that Radio-Electronics.com and ElectronicsWeekly.com are the two biggest electronics sites based in the UK (I think electronicstalk.com doesn’t match their traffic, but getting data on this site’s traffic is even more difficult!).

6 reasons why great editorial is more important than SEO

October 30th, 2010

I was struck by this weeks list of the top 10 stories from Electronics Weekly. Of the 10 most popular stories, six were from the Mannerisms blog. One was the pictures of the first issue of EW, there were a couple of news stories and the 10th most popular was the story naming the new MacBook Air “gadget of the week”.
Electronics Weekly has a great editorial team, who all generate high-quality, unique stories, but most of their journalists are providing “newsfeed” content. Conventional wisdom says that the more news stories you generate, the better chance you have popping up as a result of a Google search, and therefore the more traffic you will get. But the EW stats suggest it’s not that simple. Not all of David Manner’s posts are related to news – in fact the saga of Ed the serial CEO is fiction. Could it be that readers are regularly visiting EW to get their favourite content because they find it so valuable? OK, the gadget of the week is clearly something that should get good traffic from Google, but the other stories aren’t so likely to drive much search engine traffic. So we can probably assume readers are visiting these stories directly, or from links on other pages of the site. Readers choosing to visit a specific site because they love the quality of the journalism, rather than just going to the first result returned from a Google search? If this means journalists focus on great writing rather than becoming SEO experts, we’re all going to benefit.

Electronics Weekly front covers through the years

September 19th, 2010

As part of their 50th anniversary celebrations, Electronics Weekly has published images showing how the front cover has changed over the years (sorry page has been removed). It’s not only interesting to see how the publication has moved from a newspaper format to more of a magazine layout, but it’s also scary to realise how many of the front covers I can remember!

50 years of Electronics Weekly

July 29th, 2010

I really enjoyed looking through the images of the first issue of Electronics Weekly. The pages have just been posted as part of EW’s 50th anniversary celebrations. It’s interesting to see how the publication has changed over the years. The adverts are also fascinating: the first issue proves that “the missing ingredient” is a tag line that has stood the test of time, although one advert included a image of punched tape – not something that would shout “leading edge” today!

Elektra awards entry deadline extended

June 30th, 2010

Tradition is important in Europe, so it’s nice to see the Elektra Awards extend the entry deadline again. Entries are now due by 23rd July 2010.

Electronics Weekly smartens up

June 24th, 2010

The design of Electronics Weekly has been updated to a “cleaner and more modern” look. Interestingly one of the changes is to reduce the number of stories highlighted on the front page – presumably to encourage more people to read through the magazine in a linear fashion.

EW jobs go social

April 26th, 2010

I remember the old days when publications could rely on recruitment to generate pages of print advertising. With the move to online recruitment, this is no longer true, but it’s good to see that some publications are still innovating to try to keep hold of as big a share of the recruitment spend as possible.

Electronics weekly has just updated its jobs site, with the aim of making it easier to find jobs that better match your interests. In addition to related jobs, the site will also use behaviour of other site users to recommend possible roles ("People who applied for this job, also applied for…").

Call for papers: Embedded Live

April 12th, 2010

Electronics Weekly and EE Times Group, the organisers of Embedded Live, have issued a call for papers. The conference and exhibition will take place at Earls Court, London, on 20th to 21st October 2010, and they hope to run more than 40 classes in 50-minute, 90-minute, 2.5-hour, or full day formats.

Abstracts are use by 7th May, and information on how to submit is available on the Embedded Live website.

UK show gets a name

February 24th, 2010

In December Electronics Weekly and EE Times Group announced they would partner on a UK show in 2010, and that show has finally got a name: Embedded Live. In our industry it’s nice to get a simple name that is real words and not an abbreviation. Although the UK is probably the toughest market in Europe for trade shows, I really hope that the combination of EW and EE Times group will be strong enough to make this event a success.

TRaC blog launches on ElectronicsWeekly.com

February 9th, 2010

I’m delighted to see that Electronics Weekly has launched a blog about test and certification that is written by our client TRaC. The engineers at TRaC have superb knowledge about this subject, which is not surprising considering they are the leading UK test and certification company. They’ve been supplying posts to EW for some time, so the blog already has some fascinating posts.

Elektra Awards 2009

December 2nd, 2009

Thanks to all at Electronics Weekly for putting on such a good show last night for the annual Elektra Awards. We had several clients shortlisted, with Microchip walking away with the Semiconductor Product of the Year – Digital award. Many congratulations to Microchip and all our clients who were shortlisted.

Electronics Weekly and UBM to partner for ESC2010

December 2nd, 2009

At last night’s Elektra Awards, Paul Briggs, Group Publisher for Reed Technology Group, announced that Electronics Weekly and UBM are to form a strategic partnership for the Embedded Systems Conference and Exhibition, to be held on October 20-21st 2010 at Earls Court. A couple of months ago this partnership would have been almost unthinkable, but with the sale of EE Times, it seems almost anything is possible.

Of course it is good news that there will be two major companies behind the event next year, and I really hope it works. It does, however, need some radical thinking. Neither company generated large attendances at events this year, and more worryingly they didn’t appear to be able to attract big name exhibitors who must sign up early to encourage smaller exhibitors and visitors to attend.

The move will presumably see National Electronics Week refocus on its core electronics manufacturing sector, which may even increase the quality of the visitors, although they will have to work had to secure strong support from the media.

Overall it’s a good thing that we have commitment to ESC2010, but if it is to be a success the organisers need to think radically. Today exhibition success is not about achieving a particular revenue per square meter of booth space. It’s all about getting big-name companies who will not only attract visitors, but also proactively market the event to their databases, and provide compelling reasons to attend, such as running classes on the show floor. I hope that EW and UBM can see the benefit of this, and are able to announce commitments to exhibit from several major manufacturers.

Map mashup from Electronics Weekly

July 6th, 2009

I liked this idea from Electronics Weekly. A simple mashup of R&D locations in the UK that are taken from press releases with Google Maps gives you a great view of where research and development activity is happening in the UK.

Electronics Weekly offering pay-per-lead

June 19th, 2009

And then there were three… Elektroniknet and Elektronik Praxis both offer pay-per-lead campaigns and now Electronics Weekly has joined in, offering to supply a stream of qualified leads at a fixed cost per lead. The level of qualification and the cost varies hugely – there is roughly a 30 to 1 ratio between the most expensive and cheapest options, so you need to be careful that you are picking the option that delivers the best value leads for your needs.

Pay-per-lead is an approach we’ve used with several IT clients, and it was pretty inevitable that publishers in our sector would follow. But the approach has pitfalls for electronic component vendors.

When we work with IT clients, they often have systems with an entry level cost of several tens of thousands of dollars, and the difference between a small and large client might only be a factor of ten.

Many of our electronics component clients have products that sell for a couple of dollars or less, and the difference between small volume (e.g. a proof of concept) and high volume can be a factor of 100,000 or more. Setting the qualification questions is therefore more important, but can also be much more challenging.

If you’re interested in pay-per-lead, and would like to talk to an agency that has run these campaigns, why not send me an email?

Elektra awards deadline extended

June 17th, 2009

It’s good to see that some great traditions survive. Although I’m desperately hoping for Andy Murray to make it in to the second week of Wimbledon, and that it doesn’t rain during the tournament, some traditions do make you smile. As with previous years, the deadline for the Elektra Awards has been extended – you now have until 3rd July to submit your entry.

Why do companies go to shows?

April 21st, 2009

Clearly electronics companies don’t go to trade shows to exhibit. I’ve just been sent an update from Electronics Weekly about their 3-day design conference taking place at Electronics Weekly Live (which itself is part of National Electronics Week) in June. There are 21 companies speaking. In fact 21 really good companies speaking at the event. It’s an impressive list, and would definitely encourage me to attend. So I checked out the exhibitor list, naively thinking it must be impressive. Sadly of the 21 companies speaking only four were listed as exhibitors.

This doesn’t make sense to me. I can’t believe the exhibitor list is that out of date. Why do so many companies invest the time to speak, but not exhibit. They must value the quality of the visitors to put in the time to write and present a paper. If this approach continues, we’re going to see a “tragedy of the exhibitions” where visitors don’t turn up to the event because of the small roster of exhibitors, leaving a great seminar schedule poorly attended. Personally I still think that trade shows can be great lead generation tools, so I hope that this gloomy vision doesn’t happen.

The changing look of electronicsweekly.com

April 17th, 2009

Electronics Weekly has just updated the look and feel of their website, and so I thought it would be a nice idea to use the wonders of the wayback machine to have a look at how the site has changed over the years. I accept that the wayback machine is limited, presenting pages without most of the graphics, but it does give an idea of how the look and feel of the site has changed over the years.

September 2002

September 2003

July 2005

July 2006

April 2009

I like the clear and somehow less cluttered layout of the new site, although it is interesting to see that the various channels have been organised into categories (design, components, etc) and have been given less prominance than in recent versions of the site. Also the slightly wider layout probably isn’t going to win any fans in the world of netbooks, but I would expect that most users would have displays that are more than capable of showing the entire page width.

Do readers want interaction?

April 14th, 2009

An interesting experiment is going on at Electronics Weekly, where they’ve tried using polls to generate more interaction with the readers of their blogs. The questionn”what is your favourite blog” only attracted 5 responses in two weeks for Electro-Ramblings, whereas the question “what will succeed silicon” had attracted an impressive 91 responses for Mannerisms at the time of writing this post.

From my point of view it seems pretty clear that engineers are very happy to provide their opinions on technical issues, but are less interested in the more self-serving “what do you like about our site” questions. Whatever the case, if David Manners can continue to generate such good response to polls, the results could become news stories.

Distribution World becomes a blog

March 30th, 2009

Electronics Weekly has relaunched distribution world as a blog. I’m really pleased to see that Richard Wilson is not only creating great content, but that he has made distribution world distinctly different to Mick Eliott’s EPN distribution blog.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Distribution World when the market turns up again – presumably if there is sufficient advertising revenue it will make sense to relaunch a print, or more likely digital, magazine. Whilst I’m waiting, I’ll be amusing myself reading the archives: EW has reused the old parallel processing blog which means that posts about transputer chips being available on eBay are currently still in the distribution blog archives!

Electronics Weekly Live blog

March 15th, 2009

Using a blog to promote an event makes a lot of sense: all the new sponsors and attractions can get their 15 minutes of fame. Electronics Weekly has a great example of how to promote an event through a blog, and have also been Twittering about EW Live. Now all we need is the Facebook page….

Electronics Weekly launches Open Source Blog

February 5th, 2009

After a few months when the EW blog activity was fairly quiet (excluding, of course, the unmissable and never quiet Mannerisms by David Manners!), they’ve gone blog crazy! Hot on the heels of news about the LED and Startup blogs, EW has announced the Open Source Engineering blog, which will be written by Richard Danter, Mark Day and Hans Juergen Rauscher, all of whom work for Wind River. The blog has already been primed with a number of posts, and with the in-depth knowledge of these three contributors, this should be an important source of information for anyone working with Linux in an embedded environment.

EW finds startup blogger

February 4th, 2009

Stephen Graham, co-founder of the 2008 Elektra Start-up of the Year, Air Semiconductor, is the new blogger for Electronics Weekly’s Technology Startup blog. It will be interesting to see what happens, as EW has re-branded the blog “On Air – Views from a UK Technology Startup”, and it’s clear that the blog will be used to talk about Air in some detail – a noticeable change in direction from the original startup blog. I guess if someone is going to give their time and the content is good, we shouldn’t complain about the blog also being used for promotional purposes.

EW Twitters news

January 31st, 2009

After flirting with Twitter a year ago, Electronics Weekly has decided that the online stream of consciousness is going to stick around and has launched an electronics news twitter feed.

EW Twitters

January 29th, 2009

I guess I should admit that I’ve never really been a fan of Twitter – so much dull and banal information that I found it boring. I do follow a couple of people on the service, but have always wondered whether it really had value. Until now! Richard Wilson has started twittering calls for copy and information about the progress of Electronics Weekly stories. Absolutely brilliant!

Electronics Weekly launches monthly competition

January 14th, 2009

I’m impressed with the great job Electronics Weekly does of coming up with new ideas for the website, even if I don’t like all of these innovations. The latest idea, a monthly competition based on missing components in circuit schematics, is – in my opinion – fabulous. Kudos to DigiKey as well for providing the prize (and at only £50 per month this is wonderful value for them).

Electronics Weekly illuminates LEDs with new blog

January 7th, 2009

In the past, I’ve highlighted the lack of electronics blogs, particularly in Europe. Things are slowly getting better – it was great to see that Electronics Weekly has expanded their roster of blogs with LED Luminaries, a collaborative blog written by a number of industry figures. As the first EW blog with several people posting, it will be interesting to see if this approach works.

Electronics Weekly Blog Awards winner

December 4th, 2008

Congratulations to Pradeep Chakraborty , whose blog has won the EW Blog Award for electronics. Visit the EW website to find the winners of all the categories.

It’s great to see EW promoting blogs, which have so far had minimal impact on the European electronics media landscape – as I pointed out previously, most of the blogs are either focussed on hobbyist topics or written by mainstream journalists.

At Napier we work in a variety of B2B technology markets, many of which have a much broader blogging community. I hope that these awards help encourage more people in our sector to blog.

electronica videos from Electronics Weekly

November 28th, 2008

More video content from electronica – Electronics Weekly includes coverage of all the important events at the show, including the lovely Marilyn Monroe on the DigiKey stand.

Electronics Weekly plans EW Live at NEW

November 6th, 2008

Will this be the move that makes National Electronics Week (NEW) a really good show for our industry? Electronics Weekly will host a semiconductor technology conference and exhibition incorporated within National Electronics Week 2009.

The first National Electronics Week was OK, but really was just a revised version of NEPCON, with much of the show’s focus on electronics manufacturing. If the EW Live event can pull in presentations from leading semiconductor companies, who then choose to exhibit, and this then pulls in greater visitor numbers, then the show could really take off. Personally I really hope that it happens: UK engineers would benefit from a great show, as would the exhibitors. Unfortunately UK electronics engineers tend to be reluctant to attend shows, but I would certainly wish the organisers of NEW and EW Live the very best of luck.

Circuits. Circuits. Circuits

September 30th, 2008

I really like the approach Electronics Weekly’s website takes to repackaging content to add value (isn’t this the definition of what it means to be a good editor?). They’ve just started pulling together circuit ideas and diagrams in the rather obviously-named “Electronics Weekly Circuits Section”. Although “in beta”, the site is already looking good, taking mostly existing content and presenting a new way to view and navigate that will help ensure readers find useful information on every visit.

Innovation means quality????

September 18th, 2008

I have to confess that I didn’t blog this earlier as I wasn’t sure whether someone was winding me up… But it’s not a joke, Electronics Weekly really has launched “Chips and Beer”, a guide to pubs and other places to “get a decent pint”. OK, it is innovative, but whether the traffic it delivers to the EW website is going to represent the advertisers’ target sudience has to be pretty questionable.

25th Sept – Response from Electronics Weekly
I received this response to the above story from Alun Williams of EW. I think he makes some good points, particularly the way he separates the blogs as being “different”. He also points out that EW is trying to innovate and experiment, something I have highlighted in Napier News and definitely support. I’ve pasted in the full text of his reply.

The main thrust of my reply would be that the blog is about community more than anything else.

It is about an aspect of industry life that has not previously been addressed on the site – being out on the road, on a professional basis. We are hoping that readers who do take an interest in the blog – one of eight blogs on EW, I would emphasise, which cover a range of areas – will find the guide helpful.

The contents of the paper magazine already go online, so we add to the mix with other elements on the website. So, of course, this isn’t core material but I do believe it still has a place.

David Manners, the man behind the blog was actually prompted by people within the industry to produce the guide, which is aimed squarely at the semiconductor business – we are hoping to gather recommendations for cities in Asia and off-the-main-tourist-beat US states, for example, rather than Tuscany or Provence.

In theory, readers might be able to research the places themselves on the Web, but I’d emphasise the community aspect – helping industry colleagues having to spend evenings away from home in far flung (potentially unwelcoming, unglamorous) places – how much better to rely on recommendation from industry peers?

On the point about search engines, I can honestly say this is not an SEO gambit to attract traffic. Rather, it’s an attempt to further encourage electronic engineers to engage with the site. Just one new string in the EW.com bow. To be honest, we think it may be a slow burner – slowly word will get out, people may use the recommendations, then provide further feedback and then propose better alternatives – electronic engineers talking to electronic engineers. That’s not a bad definition of community engagement.

To be honest, by their nature, blogs always evolve – either flourishing or alternatively fading away. We shall see, with this one, too. But we feel on Electronics Weekly we should definitely keep trying and innovating, always addressing – in different ways – needs of the electronics community.

Where are the electronics blogs?

September 15th, 2008

Electronics Weekly has launched their Electronics Blog Awards 08, which we think is a fantastic idea. In many ways the electronics industry has allowed blogging to pass it by. The suggestions made by EW for the shortlist reflects this, with most blogs dedicated to circuit ideas for hobbyists and a couple of blogs from major publishers (ZBNet and TechInsights).

Other tech sectors from networking to gadgets have a much stronger independent media, and it would be great to see a much larger blog community covering our industry. I don’t want to discount blogs from large publishers (the always entertaining Mannerisms is always one of the first things I read), but I would love to see a range of different viewpoints like those on blogs by Chris Edwards and Nick Flaherty. If these awards encourage more people to create blogs like these, they will have been a real success.

Call for book reviewers

July 7th, 2008

Times must be tough! ElectronicsWeekly.com is calling for volunteers to review books free of charge (although the reviewers do get to keep the book). Actually I think this is quite a good idea: as well as keeping editorial costs low, there will be some engineers who would love to read the books, and for whom the 300-word review should take little time to complete. We’ll keep an eye on the site to see if this approach does attract would-be book reviewers.

New look for Electronics Weekly

June 17th, 2008

Electronics Weekly has relaunched, with a new look, and more importantly a renewed commitment to in-depth editorial. Electronics Weekly believes that news will be predominantly consumed online, and has therefore reduced news coverage in print (although not eliminated it). I’m not sure whether this is a reflection of the electronics industry, or of an internal Reed philosophy.

overall I really liked the new look. It’s definitely good that Electronics Weekly hasn’t abandoned news coverage in print, and the news analysis section allows more in-depth coverage of key news stories. The products section is also retained, proving that engineers still like browsing product sections to learn about new devices. The layout is very readable, and is an evolution of the successful EW look, rather than a radical re-design. Overall I’m pleased that the successful EW formula is maintained, and expect the change to be well received by readers and advertisers.

Wikipedia and the European electronics Media

May 31st, 2008

It was recently pointed out that the Electronics Weekly website was referenced by several Wikipedia articles, and when we did some digging around we found other electronics sites such as elektroniknet.de also cited by Wikipedia authors.

Sadly the Electronics Weekly editorial team aren’t considered famous enough to warrant an article – perhaps that is something that Jane, the Reed employee who has created entries for the Reed Technology titles might want to address!

IET and Electronics Weekly programmable hardware conference

May 19th, 2008

The IET and Electronics Weekly are jointly organising a Programmable Hardware Systems Conference to be held on the 8-9 October 2008 in London. I hope that the event will be a success, and will drive more collaboration between the IET and EW in the future: combining the resources of the UK’s professional body and largest-circulation magazine should ensure the success of the event, and may even begin to chip away at the myth that UK engineers don’t like attending trade shows!

The two-day event includes the conference, a table-top exhibition and a networking dinner. To find out about speaking opportunities contact Johanna Czako.

Electronics Weekly to launch contextual adverts

May 14th, 2008

I’ve just seen the demo of the contextual adverts that will be running on electronicsweekly.com, and I have to say I’m rather impressed. OK, so most websites run contextual advertising, because almost everyone is running Google adsense to use up spare inventory. The system from FirstLight, which will be used on the EW website offers something completely different.

I particularly liked the promise of content being scraped automatically from an advertiser’s website, which is a great way to ensure the latest content is included in the system. They even promise to filter against “bad” keywords. EW are also realistic enough to understand that this will have to be “overseen” and that manual intervention will be required from time to time.

What are the downsides? I’m a little disappointed that there is still a feel of a walled garden, with all adverts routed to what is effectively a microsite within electronicsweekly.com (although it is then possible to link to the advertiser’s own site). Also there is an inevitable issue of “fairness”, with distributors with broad ranges of products likely to see a very high number of impressions at a reasonable cost, whereas more niche suppliers will pay the same amount for far fewer – although we do accept that some impressions are more valuable than others. Finally, the idea of an industry directory that consists only of the reletively small number of advertisers – I just don’t understand the reasoning behind producing a directory that will be so far from comprehensive that I cannot see a use for it. I just wouldn’t include this in any ROI calculation.

Despite the reservations, however, I think this idea will be extremely successful for Electronics Weekly – there are certain groups of advertisers who will clearly obtain great value from the service, and even niche companies may find the ROI acceptable. Furthermore the system will increase the revenue per page view without filling the page with garish, distracting adverts. Let’s hope other European electronics websites offer similar services in the near future.

Elekra entry deadline extended

April 25th, 2008

It’s become an annual ritual….the deadline for entries to the Elektra Awards has been extended. Entries will be accepted up to 9th May.

Electronics Weekly SAM study

April 2nd, 2008

Electronics Weekly will run another SAM Study (Subscriber Attention Measurement) for the adverts placed in their 16th April edition. I believe that advertisers should take advantage of opportunities to understand the effectiveness of their adverts, and the SAM study gives pretty good feedback on what works and what doesn’t. If you want to know more about the studies, the last study from October 07 is available online.

Electronics Weekly shrinks team

February 26th, 2008

Electronics Weekly has shrunk the size of the editorial team, with the departure of News Editor Alex Mayhew-Smith and Melanie Reynolds, Features Editor. This follows the announcement that publisher Mick Elliot was to leave the title. At the same time, the magazine is promising to become a “technical weekly” (with technical articles and news analysis), rather than a newspaper, with articles taken from the US title EDN.

The content should change from next week, and I’m very interested to see how this change is implemented. Whilst I’m sure that readers would ask for more technical content, independant research such as Napier’s study at the end of 2007 shows that the internet hasn’t replaced print titles. This is true for news as well as for technical material, and moving closer to the content of New Electronics may not prove to be a good idea. I will be monitoring the changes closely, so keep checking Napier News for our latest views!

EW product guides

November 6th, 2007

Electronics Weekly now has an interesting range of technology guides. It’s not the first time magazines have tried to produce such guides, but it is an indication of how much unique information is being generated by EW. Arguably the Wikipedia entry on LEDs is more comprehensive, but Electronics Weekly has cleverly linked their technology guides to relevant stories on the site, giving a better view of the latest developments. The way that the guide have been implemented is a step forward from the conventional approach of dividing a magazines site into product/technology categories, and should help attract visitors looking for reference information as well as news.

Shortlist announced for Elektra awards

October 9th, 2007

Reed Electronics Group and Electronics Weekly have announced the shortlist for the Elektra awards 2007. We’d particularly like to congratulate Vicor, who were shortlisted for their innovative online suite of tools, PowerBench.

Further extension of Elektra awards entry deadline

July 26th, 2007

Following on from our earlier story, the Elektra awards have extended their deadline to 3rd August. Still time to get those entries in!

Electronics Weekly introduces Ask Your Market

June 3rd, 2007

Reed Business Insight, Electronics Weekly’s market research division, has launched Ask Your Market, which is an omnibus style (i.e. many different companies submitting questions) research survey amongst electronics industry professionals. With a promise of at least 200 respondents, and a cost of £500 per question, this may be an interesting route to gain market knowledge. We are, however, disappointed that Reed are not giving a commitment as to the profile of the respondents: electronics is a diverse topic, with few – if any – engineers having knowledge or influence over all aspects of our industry. For many companies, where their target audience represents a small fraction of all electronics engineers, the number of relevant answers could be quite small. It’s likely, however, that the survey will breed a number of press releases that use market research to create a story or promote a product: unfortunately an approach that often results in dull, obvious releases.

Correction – 25th July, 2007
Electronics Weekly will, in fact, guarantee 200 responses from a particular profile of respondants (e.g. microcontroller specifiers). The research will also break down the results by the demographics used to profile the circulation. This is great news, and makes the research service something everyone should consider. The only downside is that the current plans are to run at a frequency of around 1 per quarter (driven by demand), which could cause a significant wait for results if you just miss a survey.

Richard Ball to leave Electronics Weekly

April 20th, 2007

What could be better than working as an editor in the European electronics industry? For Richard Ball it appears that dangling on a rope attached to a mountain is a much better option as he is leaving to become a climbing instructor and to take a teaching qualification. We’d like to wish Richard the best of luck in his new career, and look forward to watching him absail down the Reed tower block on his last afternoon!

EW announces Smart Power conference

March 22nd, 2007

Following-on from the Clean Design event, Electronics Weekly has announced Power Management 2007, and event designed for managers, senior engineers, design engineers and technical management with an interest in efficient and cost effective power management. Like other Electronics Weekly events, the sponsors will have a huge influence on the content of the presentations, with packages ranging from £9000 for Gold sponsorship to the £2000 package that primarily gives you a table-top exhibition space. This event continues the trend for more and more small, highly focussed conferences.

Electronics Weekly announces golf day

February 24th, 2007

Perhaps not the most innovative of events, but apparently some people enjoy walking miles to hit a small ball with a metal stick. Electronics Weekly has announced they will be holding an industry golf day in June. Lots of sponsorship opportunities are available to promote your company to the golf-loving buyers in the industry. For more information (but not golf lessons!) contact Napier.

Electronics Weekly clean design conference

February 8th, 2007

Environmentally-aware design stretches well beyond just meeting the legislation, and Electronics Weekly will be offering companies an opportunity to discuss all aspects of “clean design” at the upcoming event on 23rd May in Reading, UK. Inevitably the broad scope of the event means that the initial sponsors are Government bodies and ditributors, but we would expect a number of component manufacturers to want to get involved. A variety of sponsorship packages and table-top spaces are available.

Electronics Weekly to extend blogs

January 26th, 2007

Electronics Weekly is planning to launch a series of blogs written by “industry figures”, extending the portfolio of blogs beyond those written by David Manners and Richard Ball. Electronics is an interesting industry as few blogs that have any significant impact on the industry, although notable exceptions such as Nick Flaherty’s Embedded Blog do exist.

Is this a good idea? Are the editors of Electronics Weekly putting themselves out of a job? Some commentators such as Chris Edwards seem to believe that journalists as information intermediaries is an outdated concept (despite being an editor himself): in a recent post he said, “For the last few years, I’ve been saying to PRs that their contact with the press, particularly those in trade media, is going to go away. They need to go direct to the user.” Clearly the blogs on Electronics Weekly go some way towards fulfilling this prophecy.

At Napier, however, we don’t think that this move by EW means journalists should be retraining. The blogs provide the opportunity for opinion and comment: something that is rarely provided by journalists in our industry (for some good reasons – perhaps we’ll post a story about why this is the case in the future). In electronics, editors perform a different function: firstly they provide an intelligent filter for the information and secondly they aggregate information and opinions about particular topics in a very efficient way. Neither of these functions is done particularly well either by search engines or by RSS readers. Perhaps the new blogs on Electronics Weekly will produce a contributor of the calibre of Bob Pease, whose articles for Electronic Design on subjects from Floobydust to PLLs are required reading for almost every engineer at some point in their careers. Bob actually would fit the bill as the perfect blogger for EW – although Penton his current employers might have something to say about that. But if EW could find another writer like Bob, I’d read the blog every week!

Electronics Weekly launches blogs

November 22nd, 2006

Electronics Weekly launched blogs from David Manners and Richard Ball just before electronica. OK, so they’re not exactly the first journalists in our sector to blog, but now they have had a chance to post a few stories, we think everyone should check out the blogs. In particular read their views on the CEO panel at electronica: in particular David Manners’ blunt assessment of the failure of the CEO of ST Microelectronics to attend is a reminder that journalists in the European electronics media aren’t just mouthpieces for the major companies in the industry! Click here to view the blogs.

Electronics Weekly to run more events

November 20th, 2006

With the Elektra awards now established as the biggest knees-up for the industry, and plans for an even larger event in December 2007 (an 800-seat dinner at the Hilton Park Lane), Electronics Weekly is expanding it’s event activity to include stand-alone technical conferences.

In April a conference on “Clean Design” is planned, and a power management event is pencilled in for the end of the year. These events will include a conference, table-top exhibition and a gala dinner. Although they are relucatant to commit to a target for numbers, we understand that Electronics Weekly is aiming for around 150-200 attendees per event, with a focus on attracting senior-level delegates.

Electronics Weekly to issue electronica special

July 12th, 2006

Like many other publications, EW sees electronica as an opportunity for more advertising, and has announced an electronica guide for the electronics designer. Due to be published on 8th November, the supplement offers a wide range of opportunities for exhibitors to promote their presence at the show.

Elektra Site Fails

June 24th, 2006

Yesterday – the deadline for submitting entries for the Reed European Electronics awards (Elektra) – the entry form on the site failed. Perhaps it was due to the large number of people that believe the maxim “if it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done” (although the extension of the deadline for these awards has become a tradition. For those leaving thing late, entries could be submitted by email, and the form is still live at the time of writing.

Reed awards looking for entrants and sponsors

March 9th, 2006

Elektra 2006, the European awards organised by Reed Electronics Group will be held alongside electronica in November. The site contains details of the various sponsorship opportunities, and also the entry form. The categories are: Manufacturer of the Year, Supplier of the Year, Distributor of the Year, Product of the Year, System on Chip Design Award for Industrial & Automotive Applications, Semiconductor Product of the Year, Investing in People Award, Embedded System Innovation of the Year, Environmental Award, Research & Development Award, Design Application Award, Online Business Award, Start-up of the Year and Company of the Year. Deadline for entries is 23rd June.

Electronics Weekly launches first paid-for microsite

May 17th, 2005

Electronics Weekly and IDT have launched the first paid-for microsite on ElectronicsWeekly.com. The Communications ICs & Solutions site is built using a broad range of content from both IDT and EW, and demonstrates how online advertising need not be restricted to pretty animated graphics. The project has been run for IDT by Napier, so we’d love to hear your comments about the site. Email to let us know what you think.

Elektra deadline extended

May 4th, 2005

Electronics Weekly, organisers of Reed’s European Electronics Industry Awards (with the new, cool “Elektra” branding!) have extended the deadline for entries to 18th May. There’s still time to get your entries in: contact Napier if you want help in putting together an entry submission that will really grab the judges’ attention.

Dean Slade did it!

April 18th, 2005

Congratulations to Dean – who completed the London Marathon at the weekend – from everyone at Napier. Dean raised loads of money for a children’s charity, The Children’s Trust. If you didn’t sponsor Dean, you can still donate money via his web page. Congratulations are also due to Harry Yates, R&D editor of Electronics Weekly, who also completed the marathon.

Electronics Weekly introduces features rate

April 4th, 2005

In a move to make the title more affordable to advertisers, Electronics Weekly has introduced a “features rate” for adverts that appear with the features in the middle of the magazine. Although Reed is not like to be this blunt, we believe that the fact that the move to rate card resulted in a substantial increase in page rate for many advertisers is the major cause of EW’s loss of share reletive to their competitor titles. This new rate offers a route back in for those disappointed advertisers and we believe that it will result in a stronger magazine.

Electronics Weekly bolsters online team

March 29th, 2005

We like ElectronicsWeekly.com, which is already one of the best online electronics sites in Europe. Now RBI has increased the focus on the site, by naming Richard Ball as web manager responsible for the development of the site, and Chris Martin as sales manager.

Richard is well known in the industry, and was previously deputy editor of Electronics Weekly. Chris has previously worked for cw.com, the online arm of another Reed publication Computer Weekly, as well as working for Associated Newspapers on the Evening Standard’s thisislondon web site and the Independent Newspapers Group.

It’s unlikely that another UK title will be able to match the commitment and investment that RBI are putting into the electronicsweekly.com site. We think that these moves – coupled with the promotion in the print magazine – mean that the site will continue to dominate the UK online electronics media. Whilst the industry remains in a depression, it will be tough to make money online, but the strength of the site should ensure that it will take a large percentage of the online advertising spend in the UK electronics industry. The revenue from the jobs section will also help!

Reed industry awards get new name

February 24th, 2005

The Reed European Electronics Industry Awards for 2005 have been launched under a new brand “Elektra 05”. Despite having branding that could have been invented by the most popular heavy-metal magazine in the UK (email Mike or ask any other British engineer for an explanation!) these awards are a key event in the European electronics calendar. With support from the Reed titles in Europe such as Electronics Weekly, EPN and CIE, these awards are the only truly pan-European prizes in the industry.

Visit www.electronicsweekly.co.uk/awards to enter and to book your place at the glitzy Grosvenor House evening on 28th September. Companies looking to increase their brand awareness, might also consider sponsoring some of the awards. The Investing in People Award, Training Award, Project Team of the Year, Start-up of the Year, Company of the Year and even the flagship Product of the Year awards are all looking for sponsors. Contact Napier to get a great sponsorship deal.

EW bangs the drum

February 16th, 2005

Electronics Weekly today featured a readership survey that showed it to be the leading UK title on its front cover. Whilst we understand the competitive pressures of the market, we wonder whether the readers really think this is amongst the most important news of the week. Advertisers and agencies that understand the market respect the quality and readership of the magazine (and also should also be impressed by the online magazine and the website).

Surveys, however, always have limitations. For example the story says nothing about the sample used, other than naming the companies for whom the survey was performed. The headline percentages in any survey can be misleading. It’s unlikely that the people participating in the survey exactly represent your target market. If you want to know more about which magazine has the best readership for your advertising, why not ask Napier. We may well recommend Electronics Weekly, but we’ll make sure that any analysis looks specifically at the markets you want to address, and the messages you want to communicate.

Give Dean your dosh!

February 14th, 2005

Dean Slade – the Group Advertising Manager at Electronics Weekly – needs money! No, it’s not a sign of the depressed market, he’s running the London Marathon to raise money for a special children’s charity, The Children’s Trust. You can e-mail your pledge to Dean or visit Dean’s fund raising page to pledge your support on-line.

Entertainment from Electronics Weekly

December 7th, 2004

In a novel attempt to get the decision makers of European electronics marketing to visit their media centre, Electronics Weekly are offering a game to play in the runup to Christmas. With a somewhat tenuous link to their latest BPA figures, and a game that doesn’t quite match Half-Life 2, you might think that there would be little interest, but the competition offers two mini iPods as prizes for those people with little to do in the runup to Christmas. The closing date for the competition is 20th Dec.

Electronics Weekly circulation hits 41,267

November 7th, 2004

The first major European title to really develop an online circulation – Electronics Weekly – has released their latest BPA figures, which show a total qualified circulation of 41,267. Interestingly the total number of subscribers receiving digital versions is 19,466, compared with 26,258 receiving print copies (adding the numbers doesn’t equal the total circulation as some people receive both formats).

So is Europe a leader in online publishing? Probably not yet, although the online circulation of EW is phenominal: EE Times manages only 5,000 online copies in its total circulation of 150,000 in its last BPA (Dec 03) – despite the perception that Europe is lagging the US in acceptance and use of the Internet.

Electronics Weekly Awards shortlist now published

October 14th, 2004

The shortlist for the Electronics Weekly Awards has been published. The shortlist also featured in this week’s issue of Electronics Weekly.

2004 European Electronics Industry Awards shortlist due this week

October 4th, 2004

The Electronics Weekly site promises that the shortlist for the 2004 European Electronics Industry Awards, despite rumours that the Internet-based judging process hasn’t started. Hopefully we will be able to bring you the finalists before the end of the week.

ElectronicsWeekly.com to offer sponsored links in editorial

September 15th, 2004

Electronics Weekly has confirmed that they will soon offer companies the ability to sponsor specific words in editorial copy, in a similar way to ComputerWeekly.com (CW is also published by Reed, and the EW website was built using technology from CW). This will give advertisers the opportunity to sponsor words or terms – for example “processor” – and whenever this word is used in editorial, the word will be underlined. Move your mouse over the word, and a box will appear with a short text ad, or click on the word, and you will be taken to the advertisers website. This “IntelliTXT” system provided by Vibrant Media is already available on the CMP sites eetimes.com, embedded.com and siliconstrategies.com, although a quick scan of these sites shows that the use of these links is yet to take off in electronics.

Electronics Weekly extends deadline for European Electronics Industry Awards

August 2nd, 2004

Electronics Weekly has announced an extension to the deadline for their European Electronics Industry Awards to 20th August, reducing stress levels of Marketing Managers around Europe. Think your company could win an award? Contact Napier and we will write and submit your entry.

Electronics Weekly re-vamps website

May 5th, 2004

ElectronicsWeekly.com, the most popular UK electronics magazine site by far has been further improved with the launch of a completely new look, and several new features. Reed have made use of the underlying design and technology that they created for the Computer Weekly site, which should mean that the costs were kept under control. The improvements, coupled with the inherent advantages of being linked to a weekly title are sure to maintain Electronics Weekly’s dominant position in the UK market.

Electronics Weekly still looking for sponsors

February 27th, 2004

Electronics Weekly are still looking for sponsors for the online edition. Already with over 7000 registered readers for the online version (some also recieve the print version, but circulation is growing quickly), you’d think that companies would be keen to get involved. But not yet.

by Admin

Elektronik Informationen | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about Elektronik Informationen up to December 2018.

elektronik informationen increases print circulation

August 2nd, 2016

Print still refuses to die, particularly in Germany. Despite the costs of print and postage, elektronik informationen has recently increased their circulation from 28,000 to an impressive 31,000 copies. It’s great to see publications growing, even in these digital times, and it’s clear that there is still strong demand for printed magazines in Germany.

Interestingly, in the same email that they sent me to talk about the print circulation, the publishers also pointed out that another success story was their lead generation service, including the customised email newsletters that they offer. So while print remains important, it’s clear that the German market has also taken to digital media: perhaps this the the country that will be best at balancing the traditional forms of media with new technology.

Irina Hübner leaves EL-info

April 11th, 2014

Irina Hübner is leaving Elektronik Informationen. She’ll be staying in the industry, and we’ll let you know where she ends up.

AT Fachverlag, publishers of Elektronik Informationen, acquired

June 20th, 2012

Holzmann Medien GmbH & Co KG, based in Bad Wörishofen has acquired AT Fachverlag GmbH and AT Medien GmbH. In addition to Elektronik Informationen, the two companies also publish Photonik, Photonik International, Biophotonik, the EOS Newsletter, Hotel & Technik and one of the leading periodicals in the plumbing and heating trade, si informationen. The 22 employees, as well as readers and advertisers in the publications, will be pleased to hear that the new owners promise work will “continue unaltered”.

Elektronik Informationen updates online presence

January 25th, 2012

Elektronik Informationen has updated the layout of the website and the design of their email newsletter, which is now sent twice a week. The focus on development of their online presence isn’t a surprise, but their decision to continue to require registration to view any technical article is interesting. This decision might reduce the number of page views achived slightly, but has huge potential to benefit both the publisher and electronics companies.
In other industries, online publications focus more on lead generation than publishers in the European electronics market. I believe that, despite the challenges in the electronics sector, lead generation should be a bigger part of electronics publishers’ business models. I really hope that by putting a value on high-quality content Elektronik Informationen will help companies get more from the content they generate.

Nick Walker takes on E. Informationen

August 29th, 2010

Nick Walker, the advertising manager for EPN has added the role of UK rep for Elektronik Informationen, Photonik, BioPhotonik and Photonik international to his portfolio.

Elektronik Informationen launches three special issues

October 17th, 2009

Elektronik Informationen is planning for 2010 with confidence, announcing three special issues covering “Electromechanics & Electronics Packaging” (April), “Optoelectronics & LED Technology” (June), and “Smart Engineering” (October). Smart Engineering will cover efficiency, ecology and sustainability in electronic product development. These special issues will each have a circulation of 22,000, and be in addition to the normal monthly magazine.

It’s great to see a title like Elektronik Informationen planning to expand in 2010, and they have definitely picked some exciting topics to cover.

On a separate note, Elektronik Information is moving to Eversbuschstrasse 134, 80999 Munich, Germany. Their telephone numbers will remain unchanged.

Elektronik Informationen to redesign

February 22nd, 2009

Elektronik Informationen plans a relaunch in May, with a clean new look and the funky new name of EL-info (www.el-info.de already routes to the existing Elektronik Informationen site). The relaunch follows-on from the appointment of Dr. Matthias Laasch as editor-in-chief, and demonstrates a commitment to suceed in the hyper-competitive German electronics magazine market. Although design is important, of course content remains king, and so I’ll be looking at the content of the title over the next few months: check back on Napier News to see what I think.

Editor interview: Dr. Matthias Laasch

January 26th, 2009

The editors working in the European electronics media are genuinely interesting people. I’ve wanted to put together a series of interviews and am delighted to have finally started this project. Even better, the first editor I talked to was Dr. Matthias Laasch, the hugely experienced editor who recently took over the helm at Elektronik Informationen:

What do you most enjoy about your new job?
Working with Elektronik Informationen is a challenge for several reasons.
First, it is a 40 year old magazine which I have known for more than a decade. For me personally, it has been a reliable information source on electronics. Clearly it will be an exciting challenge to continue and (hopefully!) improve on the success of this established periodical. Second, when I started my career it was with F&M ten years ago, when the magazine was strongly dedicated to electronics. We drove it to focus more and more towards mechatronics and automation, but now, with Elektronik Informationen, I’m returning to my “editorial roots”. I enjoy working in this extremely dynamic and competitive marketplace.

Which areas of electronics interest you the most?
I spent years with magazines that covered mechatronics; photonics and micro production; industrial applications; and opto electronics and micro systems, such as MEMS or MOEMS, so these are in my personal focus. But from the editor’s point of view, any true innovation is worth being considered – as long as it concerns electronic engineering.

Do you have any plans to enhance the magazine or website over the next year?
Yes, of course! We have many plans to extend the editorial content, enhance the editing and improve the crosslink between print and online. But as I started only three weeks ago, it is too early to be specific. In my previous job, I established new publications and hopefully, Elektronik Informationen will benefit from this experience.

What is the main factor that makes a press release interesting?
First of all, it has to meet our editorial focus, electronic engineering. It must concern the engineer. The second criterion is up-to-dateness. Is the product or information really new or is it raked up? We also appreciate PRs that particularly address the core editorial themes of an issue. Generally, serious product information is better than a collection of marketing statements. A fact-bound, brief description is better than a blown-up novel.
Moreover, as we address German-language markets only, we appreciate press releases in German.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, when you’re not editing Elektronik Informationen?
At the moment, there is very little time left. My major hobby is our 10 month old baby boy who is the most exciting experience I ever had. Hopefully, in a few years, we will share my favourite activities, such as sports (badminton, soccer, cycling, skiing), travelling, mountaineering or photography. Besides changing baby’s nappy, I love everything I can do outdoors.

Do you personally prefer to get information in print or online?
Online! Online information is faster and much easier to handle. As a matter of fact, simply including the text in the message and attaching the pictures is the very best way – the easiest, fastest and most comfortable way. I would not recommend providing the files via a website or virtual press room because the download takes additional time and, in some cases, I can spend even more time searching for a password. And time is the most critical parameter to any editor.

What is your favourite gadget?
When our son was born, I bought a high-definition camcorder, as probably everyone does at this stage of life. Well, it is a great toy, and we will certainly be happy having stored all these exciting moments in our baby’s first months. I recorded hours and hours… but never thought about cutting and making something like a movie from all the material. Will I ever do it?
Once again, time is the limiting parameter …

Hubert Joas to retire

November 17th, 2008

Hubert Joas, the popular editor of Elektronik Informationen and technology stock market guru, is to retire at the end of the year. He will be replaced by Dr. Matthias Laash, who will move from his role at Mechatronik.

Franz-Joachim Rossmann leaves Elektronik Informationen

March 31st, 2005

Elektronik Informationen email newsletter

January 7th, 2005

Elektronik Informationen hires new journalist

November 15th, 2004

by Admin

Electronica | Event updates and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about Electronica up to December 2018.

WNIE TV Release electronica 2018 Playlist

November 27th, 2018

WNIE TV has released its electronica 2018 playlist, featuring TV interviews with experts across the industry.  WNIE interviewed companies from all areas of the electronics industry for its ‘Your Eye on the Electronics Industry’ TV Series.

The interviews included an overall update of the company featured, how the profile of their customers has changed over the years, markets it is focussed in, their view of electronica 2018 and how the company has adapted its strategy.

Other key interviews include a roundtable discussion of Big Data and AI in the Smart factory of Tomorrow.

To view the full playlist and watch the videos for yourself please click here.

Your 'electronica Toolkit'

October 29th, 2018

With electronica 2018 quickly approaching, we’ve been brainstorming how we can help the industry get themselves ready for the biggest trade show of the year. We decided that the best way to help you and your company prepare for electronica, was to provide you with an outstanding marketing toolkit, that covers everything you need to know in the run-up to the trade show.

This blog will highlight Napier’s best tools and pieces of content, and the order you should use them; to help you achieve everything you need for success when attending or exhibiting at electronica 2018:

In preparation for electronica, the first thing you want to do is make sure your money is well spent. This means spending time thinking about what you can do to increase ROI.

Our tip sheet ‘9 Steps to Increase Trade Show ROI’, can help you focus your attention in the right direction to maximise ROI.  This tip sheet can help you understand why a planned approach is the way to succeed and how you can implement this in your marketing strategy.

Now you know what you need to do to increase your ROI, the next step is defining who you want to meet and what you need to do to gain their attention.

Our B2B Persona Creator Tool allows you to develop B2B personas for a specific campaign, and truly understand your target audience from the beginning. All you need to do is answer the questions provided, sit back and watch the tool do the work for you.

Use the Tool Here.

So, you’ve defined who you want to meet, and how you want to target them. But how do you work out if the people you have met are quality leads or just irrelevant contacts

Napier’s MQL and SQL definition tool allows you to personally identify what information and behaviour qualifies your leads for either marketing or sales. The tool asks you a series of questions and provides an easy to read breakdown of your information; successfully defining the behavioural features you look for in a MQL or SQL.

Use the Tool Here. 

Trade shows (especially electronica) are a great platform to interact with journalists. It’s important to remember to meet with journalists as well as potential clients.

Shows present you with an exclusive opportunity for meeting and briefing journalists face-to-face. Yet, there are also other companies trying to make an impact on these journalists. So, how do you make a bigger impact over others? Our tip sheet has 7 tips to help you get the edge over your competitors.

Following up after the show is essential to your success, and ensures you keep benefiting for months to come. Marketing automation is the most effective way to make sure you are following up your leads quickly, and efficiently.

Our tip sheet highlights why marketing automation is so crucial to post trade show follow up and how it can help you achieve a better return.

electronica India and productronica India welcome over 500 exhibitors from 27 countries

September 17th, 2018

electronica India and productronica India have welcomed over 500 exhibitors from 27 countries as they take place from the 26^th-28^th September. Held at the Bangalore International Exhibition centre in Bengaluru, the trade fairs are showcasing a range of electronic technologies; focusing on components, systems, applications and innovative electronics production technology.

With a rapidly growing interest in the Indian electronics industry electronica India and productronica India will likely benefit, with Messe Muenchen India organising the biggest ever edition of the show, while IPCA Expo will be co-located with the trade fairs for the first time.

This year the trade fairs feature new topics and discussions at co-located supporting programs. This includes the PCB Tech conference which will focus on the importance of a robust supply chain and value addition to strengthen the PCB sector in India; as well as the CEO ‘vision for quadrupling to a US$ 400 billion electronics industry’ forum.

2018 marks the biggest edition of electronica India and productronica India seen so far, and we look forward to hearing the best moments from the electronica India and productronica India trade fairs this year.

Electronica Azi gets a new look and goes International

January 20th, 2017

The popular and successful Electronica Azi publication from Romania has got a new layout and new content to kick of 2017. This recent update to the Romanian publication includes additional info on SMT Equipment and applications as well as more information and tips for Hobbyist applications, bringing the page count up from 44 pages to 64 in the second part of 2017.

Electronica Azi has also expanded to offer its extensive readership an international version in English. Aside from content being in English, this international version will include more coverage of embedded systems, analogue and digital circuits, wireless data communications, Internet of Things and Industrial Controls. The new publication will be issued 6 times a year in a digital format with 2 special print editions for Embedded World and Productronica. This is an exciting development for this regional publication.

View the latest Edition

The American view of electronica 2016

November 16th, 2016

After one of the biggest, and perhaps most successful show so far, electronica 2016 came to a close. Publications and journalists came from afar, to gain coverage of this vast trade show, with even American publications such as PowerPulse, providing a huge amount of coverage.

Stories include new product developments, insights of future trends, breaking news announcements, and on-sight interviews. It is interesting to see PowerPulse covering so many stories, especially as it is an American publication, really highlighting the importance of this trade show, and the growing interest publications from all over the world have in electronica.

electronica 2016 attracts 73000 visitors and almost 3000 exhibitors

November 15th, 2016

The organisers of electronica 2016 have announced that 2,913 companies from more than 50 countries exhibited at this year’s show, which attracted approximately 73,000 visitors from over 80 countries. Although not quite back to the number of visitors at its peak, electronica seems to be going from strength to strength.

It was interesting to hear that, besides Germany, the countries with the largest number of visitors were Italy, Austria, UK, France, Switzerland, USA, Israel, the Russian Federation, Poland and Slovenia (in that order), with a significant increase in the number of visitors from France, China, Slovenia, Turkey and Israel. This demonstrates the show is doing a good job of attracting engineers and buyers from a wide range of countries with very different electronics industries.

This year, electronica focused on automotive and connectivity (or IoT if you like cliches), two rapidly-growing markets for electronics, with a strong base of European customers. Aspiring founders and start-ups also had their own event, with 35 participants from around the world competing for the electronica Fast Forward Award in the categories “Idea,” “Prototype,” and “Start-up.”

If you missed the show (where were you?), you can get a flavour of it with the photos below:

SEMICON Europa to co-locate with electronica and productronica

October 24th, 2016

SEMI and Messe München have teamed up to co-locate SEMICON Europa with productronica and electronica. The addition of SEMICON Europa will provide productronica and electronica with a far greater focus on topics such as semiconductor and hybrid manufacturing.

The two big shows are held on alternate years, which provides a focus on components and design one year, and then a focus on manufacturing and production in the following year. It will be interesting to see how SEMICON Europa deals with this: will there be a greater focus on silicon design and EDA tools in the electronica years, for example?

SEMICON Europa will be held in beautiful Grenoble, France this week. As from next year they will trek over the Alps to Munich, making productronica 2017 (which will be held from 14-17 November 2017) the first time the events co-locate. It will be interesting to see who benefits most from the move: although logic says that SEMICON Europa will stand the most to gain by accessing a segment of the large number of visitors to productronica, the high-value visitors that attend SEMICON Europa will no doubt help to improve the quality of visitors for productronica’s exhibitors.

Unprecedented turnout at electronica India and productronica India

October 2nd, 2014

At the recent electronica India and productronica India event there was a huge increase in turnout and a record in participation. This clearly reflects the optimism of the electronics components and the electronics manufacturing industry.

In total 13,906 visitors attended the trade fairs in Bengaluru, which is 20 % more than its previous edition.  With an extensive accompanying programme it made the event even more attractive for visitors.

There was a staggering total of 341 exhibitors, representing 713 companies, which showcased their products, solutions and services at the trade fairs from September 23 to 25, 2014 at the Bangalore International Exhibition Center (BIEC), Bengaluru. With both exhibitors and visitors leaving the trade fair extremely happy.

View the full report for more details on the event.

Electronica India 2014 and Productronica India 2014 to feature extensive technical programs

September 6th, 2014

Electronica India 2014 and Productronica India 2014 have announced they will be highlighting technology innovations and recent developments in the electronics manufacturing sector. With participation from leading companies from the electronics hardware industry, the opportunity to witness the changing landscape of the sector is one that cannot be missed by the stakeholder community.

The trade fairs are poised to kick-off and provide innovative platforms to domestic electronics manufacturers to meet the consumption of electronics in India. Thereby they are supported by various associations like: Indian Electronics & Semiconductor Association (IESA), Electronic Industries Association of India (ELCINA), Consortium of Electronic Industries of Karnataka (CLIK), LED products Manufacturers’ Association, India (LEDMA) and others.

More information on Electronica India 2014 and Productronica India 2014 is available here.

ICC Media running Embedded Forum at electronica again

June 4th, 2014

ICC Media has confirmed that it will again run the Embedded Forum at electronica 2014. As a Premium Partner of the show, ICC Media has built up the 4 day electronica Embedded Forum to be an important part of the event. In addition to presentating live, all presentations at the forum are recorded and converted into webinars, creating a virtual post-show event as well as a lead generation opportunity. ICC Media is clearly focussed on building a library of video content, and has been recording the presentations for the past three shows.

The tentative programme for the Embedded Forum, which will be held in Hall A6 is:

Tuesday, 11 Nov 14
13h00 – 15h00: Internet of Things – Challenges and Opportunities
15h00 – 17h00: ARM-based Microcontrollers, FPGAs & SoCs

Wednesday, 12 Nov 14
11h00 – 13h00: Starter Kits and Reference Designs
13h00 – 15h00: Small Form Factor Boards
15h00 – 17h00: Internet of Things: Chips, Tools & Software for Device Development

Thursday, 13 Nov 14
11h00 – 13h00: Motor Control Solutions
13h00 – 15h00: Security for the Internet of Things: Challenges and Solutions
15h00 – 17h00: Embedded Computing

Friday, 14 Nov 14
11h00 – 13h00: Embedded Wireless
13h00 – 15h00: Smart Energy

The organisers are open to modifying this programme and invite exhibitors to send them suggestions for additional topics to be covered at the forum.

electronica absorbs hybridica

September 13th, 2013

In 2014, electronica will add hybrid components to the exhibition portfolio, as Messe München discontinues hybridica as a separate brand.

Our electronica 2010 video blog

November 17th, 2010

I was delighted to be asked by Electronics-Video if I would record a video blog about electronica. The four videos are now up on the vlogs channel of the electronics video site, with a range of content that marketing managers in our industry will find useful, including a demo of the Elektronik Praxis iPad app, and an interview with Kurt Skupin.

There's an app for electronica

October 27th, 2010

Thanks to Tim Fryer for telling me about the launch of ‘EasyExpoNavigation’, an iPhone app and browser-based tool to help navigate electronica. Thanks Tim: you’ve taken away our excuses for turning up late!

Free trips to electronica

October 20th, 2010

Publishers need to look after their readers, as there is always competition – even in smaller markets. I was delighted to see that Svet elektronike is taking subscribers & readers to electronica – for free!
The readers will have to help the publication at the show, but this is still a great deal for the lucky readers who get to go on the trip.

ED Europe to return to print for electronica 2010

August 7th, 2010

ED Europe, the long-time digital-only magazine is planning to return to print publishing for electronica. Sadly this is a one-off project for the show, with 10000 copies to be printed and distributed at the event. However it’s good to see Penton working hard to promote ED Europe: it reminds me of a conversation I had several years ago with one of the German editors who felt that print would never die because it was the best way to promote a publication’s digital and online presence.

ICC Media videos from electronica

November 25th, 2008

I’m sure that online video will play an increasingly important role in the electronics industry and it was good to see several publishers creating video content at electronica, including ICC Media, who have several videos available.

So was electronica good or bad?

November 20th, 2008

Now that all the fuss has died down, I thought I should reflect on electronica 2008. The event was covered widely in the electronics media – if you want to learn more about what happened at the show I’d recommend the EETimes.eu slideshow; elektroniknet’s photos and video from the show; as well as the rest of the great coverage across the European electronics media.

There is one key question to answer – was it good or bad? There were definitely some worried faces on the first morning, but overall I think the show was a genuine success. OK, so the visitor numbers were down somewhat. Large companies definitely cut down on the number of American staff travelling to the show. But overall the numbers held up reasonably well, and the good booths had great traffic (just ask DigiKey who ran out of footballs to give away on the second afternoon!). Perhaps the best summary of the event was Mick Elliott’s comment on his distribution blog summed up the situation perfectly, “Attendance this year was down seven per cent, which in a year when the numbers suggest the industry is going to hell in a handcart, I would mark as a minor triumph.”

Napier electronica 2008 editors' dinner

November 19th, 2008

We had a fabulous time on the Thursday night of electronica at our editors’ dinner. With 50 attendees, it was the biggest editors’ dinner we had organised at the show, and we just squeezed everyone into the fabulous restaurant owned by Alfons Schuhbeck. We even managed to get a nice mention in Mick Elliott’s EPN DistiBlog.

Congratulations to the winners in the raffle, which was sponsored by Microchip: Heinz Arnold editor-in-chief of Markt & Technik (iPod Nano), Achim Scharf editor of Power Electronics Europe (Digital Camera), and Andrea Gillhuber of Elektronik (Wii and Wii Fit).

For those of you that couldn’t attend, here are some photos of the event.

Napier editors' dinner 2008

Video your electronica 2008 highlights

October 9th, 2008

The electronics media is continuing to take advantage of “new media”, with both ICC Media and Electronic Design Europe again offering online videos of product announcements and interviews. I’m sure that the 2010 electronica will see many publishers offering video, and it will be interesting to see whether the early adoptors will maintain an advantage over other publishers.

PSDE electronica package

July 31, 2008

Pretty much every title in the industry offers an electronica package to boost advertising around the world’s largest electronic components show, so I don’t try to cover every one in Napier News – simply contact Napier if you want to know the options. PSDE, however, have again put together an interesting offer, with advertisers in the electronica Show 2008 issue (October 2008) benefitting from an advertising audit atudy as well as the pretty standard bonus distribution at the show and the opportunity to feature products in three electronica special ePowerPack e-newsletters.

ICC Media to run embedded forum at electronica

June 24th, 2008

ICC Media will again run the “Embedded Forum” at electronica 2008. This will be the third time the event, which has attracted good-quality attendence at prevoius electronica shows, has been held.

This year all presentations will be recorded and converted into webinars – the first time that this has been done, and in my opinion an excellent way to get more value from the presentations as well as developing the webinar content on ICC Media’s websites.

Fun and games at electronica

November 27th, 2006

E&E held an international evening just before the start of electronica, which included a “Bavarian Olympics”. The pictures show the Napier team bravely trying Bavarian finger wrestling!

electronica on YouTube

November 27th, 2006

Did you miss electronica? Don’t worry – you can catch the highlights on YouTube. Just search for electronica. TSMC even posted a video of them receiving their Elektra award! EE Times, however, preferred Yahoo video, with Brian Fuller even reporting on the body painting that caused a stir in Hall A6.

electronica is over!

November 22nd, 2006

If you are involved in electronics marketing, it’s easy to forget that the majority of European customers don’t attend electronica, although this year the organisers claimed that a total of 78 thousand visitors attended the show, with a more international mix than ever before. Perhaps trade shows are not quite as dead as some people would have you believe……………

Our experience of the show was that the semiconductor halls were phenominally busy, whereas some of the other halls were quiet. Although the top-line visitor numbers is the key metric for the organisers, we believe it is important that the show covers all aspects of the industry, not just the chip business, and we will be interested to see if any steps are taken to increase traffic to other parts of the show in two years time.

ICC Media Planning Electronica Embedded Forum

September 23rd, 2006

ICC Media are planning an Embedded Forum at electronica, with sessions on Embedded Computing Boards & Modules, Microcontrollers & Microprocessors, Real-Time Operating Systems & Development Tools, and Digital Signal Processing running over four days, the conference will be a valuable opportunity to reach some key visitors at the show. Like other ICC Media events, it’s “pay to play”, with all speakers paying to get on the bill. Contact Napier for more information, and our views on whether it makes sense for you to participate.

Correction – as from this year, Boards and Solutions UK is not a pay-to-play conference. Organised by the nice people at Invents UK, ICC Media’s partners over here, the move to a conference open to all presenters, with papers accepted on merit, has been welcomed by visitors and exhibitors.

Electronica Specials

September 23rd, 2006

Call for papers - Embedded Conference Munich at electronica 2006

February 1st, 2006

Don't forget your electronica application forms

November 23rd, 2005

The deadline for stand applications for electronica 2006 is 30th November. Don’t forget to submit your forms on time!

Re-live electronica 2004

January 10th, 2005

Is the memory of electronica becoming a bit fuzzy? You can re-live some of the show by visiting EPN’s “Live From electronica” page, where you can see videos from some of the stands (each video was paid for by the exhibitor as part of the EPN package for electronica coverage). For anyone at the show, revisiting the event is somewhat masochistic, and if you missed the show, I’m not sure that just 3 videos would be that comprehensive….

Sadly the opportunity to re-live the show does not include any beer or Barvarian cuisine (although fortunately you also don’t have to deal with the lack of sleep and headaches!).

electronica 2004 review

November 15th, 2004

Last week most of the European electronics industry was crammed into Messe München for electronica 2004. The packed U-Bahn trains reflected a show that was noticably busier than 2002 (and probably helped to spread the cold that most people managed to catch!).

The key metrics were as impressive as ever: 75 000 vistors, 3017 exhibitors. Interestingly – despite some predictions – the show was MORE international than before with 42% (31 500) of vistors coming from outside Germany! More information about the show is available on the electronica website, and we’ll be posting up all the news from the show in the next couple of days.

Electronica's army of media partners

September 16th, 2004

If the number of media partners is an indication of the likely success for an event, then Electronica 2004 should be a fantastic success. Currently Elektronik Praxis, Elektronik, Automotive Electronics and Systems, Automobil Elektronik, Markt & Technik, Electronics Express, Embedded Systems, cmp, Boards & Solutions, ECE, Technik Reveue and Electronic Embedded Systeme are all listed as “Premium” partners. Elektronik Praxis is producing the official fair magazine, and Markt & Technik will again be producing a daily paper at the show. Almost all the German magazines will be producing a show preview – including the Design & Verification who will again produce their handy pocket guide – and the show will also get strong coverage in pan-European titles such as EPN, who will again have their hall-by-hall guide to the show, and have a huge 100,000 circulation for their November issue.

Confused by all the options for promoting your stand? Call Napier for advice on which titles will give you the best return.

by Admin

EE Times | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about EE Times up to December 2018.

EE Times Europe Returns – In Print!

November 30th, 2018

At electronica Aspencore announced the “special issue” of EE Times Europe created for the show would actually be the first issue of a regular print publication. The new EE Times Europe will be published by the ICC Media team, and effectively replaces Boards and Solutions, which will become a supplement inside the new magazine.

Once you get over the surprise of an American publisher launching a print title, this move makes sense. Effectively we will have a publication with much broader reader appeal than Boards & Solutions, but the loyal readers of this popular title won’t be discouraged as B&S will still maintain its own identity within EE Times Europe.

The editor of the new title will be Bolaji Ojo, a well-respected journalist with a long history in the electronics media, and other European journalists such as Peter Clark and Nitin Dahad are also contributing to the content.

Interestingly one reason cited for the launch was an increased demand for print advertising in Europe. With banner advertising often failing to deliver compelling results, it’s interesting to see a move from some advertisers away from highly measurable digital channels to something they presumably believe is more effective, even though it’s much harder to find data to prove it.

At the show I also had a chance to catch up with Andre Rousselot, president at European Business Press (EBP). Previously EBP published EE Times Europe under licence, rebranding to eeNews Europe last year when Aspencore decided not to renew the licence. I was delighted that he welcomed the competition from the relaunched EE Times Europe: He is already seeing strong demand from pan-European advertisers and felt that the launch of another pan-European title that offers both digital and print channels would only add to the credibility of the eeNews Europe business model.

It’s great to see a well-known brand such as EE Times Europe return. With the success of eeNews Europe, perhaps this isn’t surprising, and I’m excited to see whether Andre’s view that this will grow the market for all pan-European titles by encouraging more advertisers to see the benefit of campaigns that use both print and digital.

Aspencore to Release an EE Times Special for electronica

February 20th, 2018

Aspencore (part of Arrow Electronics) will produce a print version of EE Times Europe (with an EDN Europe section) for electronica. Although the title was published in print until recently, this was through a licence agreement with EBP who rebranded their European titles in March 2017.

The special print edition will be mailed out before the show and distributed at the showground in the main entrance. Although this is an interesting turn of events, we don’t expect to see regular print versions of EE Times Europe in the near future: like other digital titles that have special print editions, we think the return to print is as much about engaging advertisers as it is about re-introducing a print title. Additionally having a print title is a good way to build the publication’s database at shows.

Despite this, it will be great to see a print version of these popular titles, so we’re looking forward to reading it in November.

EETimes Europe and EDN Europe Rebranding: Interview with Andre Rousselot

March 29th, 2017

EETimes Europe and EDN Europe have rebranded to eeNews Europe and eeDesign News. In this interview, Andre Rousselot explains the reasons behind the rebrand and talks about the future of the two titles.

Why do we need a rebranding?

The rebranding is required because of Aspencore’s decision not to renew the licence agreement between UBM and EBP originally signed in 2009. This licence agreement has been very successful  for UBM as it has established the EE Times and EDN brands in Europe at no cost for UBM. However, the rebranding will give EBP total control on its publications once again.

What else is changing?

The acquisition of EETimes and EDN in the USA and Asia by Aspencore has also resulted in the cancellation of a long-term content sharing agreement and a long term sales agreement.

1. Content sharing: this agreement was beneficial to both parties as it allowed our European Editors to repurpose US generated contents and both US and Asian Editors to repurpose content generated in Europe. In the past few years, after the folding of print editions in the USA, the content stream towards the USA was far greater than the reverse flow.
2. Sales agreement: the independent team of sales people from EBP was selling advertising for USA and Asia and the Asian sales people were selling for the European products

How much did you own of EETimes Europe and EDN Europe?

We own the circulation database and website; the only thing we licenced was the brands. I’d already made the decision to not use eetimes.eu a few years ago: at that time UBM’s intentions weren’t clear and I wanted to control the URLs for the publications. [note – at the time I questioned the logic of using the new URLs for EETimes Europe, but now it’s clear that Andre was right and I was wrong!].

We have given Aspencore the European URLs so they can use them in the future, if they want (e.g. eetimes.eu, eetimes.co.uk).

Why did Aspencore buy EETimes and EDN?

According so senior sources at Aspencore, the official reason is to keep publications alive to inform engineers around the world. The reality may be far different as it appears that Aspencore  guided by Arrow ( the owner of Aspencore) to create a monopoly of publications in key markets such as the USA and Asia. In the age of Big Data, correlating audience data of publications and websites with customer data of a large distributor is a big temptation especially when you own both!

Some have used the term “The dark side of electronics industry publishing and I like the analogy and people in the industry are now calling EE Times a “toxic brand” which makes me less sad to have to abandon it after so many years…

How are EBP’s products affected?

1. Publications: except for the name change to eeNews Europe and eeDesign News Europe, nothing will change as EBP is and remains the unique owner of the reader data bases of these publications.
2. Websites: the websites will use new URLs and the old URLs that remain the property of EBP will be forwarded to the new URLs, eenewseurope.com and www.eenewsdesigneurope.com respectively.

Has the rebranding driven changes to the editorial teams?

All editors will continue working for the new titles and websites

• Julien Happich is the Editor in chief for eeNews Europe and also runs LEDlighting
• Peter Clarke is in charge for Analog, MEMS and Sensors
• Christoph Hammersschmidt runs Automotive and Smat2zero
• Nick Flaherty runs Power Management and T&M
• Jean-Pierre Joosting is Editor in Chief of MWee and runs RF and Microwave
• Graham Prophet is Editor in Chief of eeDesign News Europe
• Rich Pell is the US based editor for Smart2zero.com
• Alain Dieul is Editor in Chief of Electronique C&I

Any plans to return to print: for example with eeDesign News Europe?

We have no plans to print either of the titles. The digital magzine generates revenue and is reletively low cost to produce – certainly lower than print. If we have opportunity in the future, then we will look at print, but I think it’s unlikely that returning to print would be possible.

When is the official date for the rebranding?

The first issues with the eeNews and eeDesign brands are the April issues

The websites will be rebranded in the last week of March

Where can I find the new media data ?

New media data can be downloaded from the new site:

• eeDesign News Europe
• eeNews Europe

EE Times Europe and EDN Europe to rebrand

March 13th, 2017

In what is probably going to be one of the least surprising moves in the electronics media this year, Aspencore has decided not to continue licencing the EE Times and EDN brands to European Business Press, and so the publisher is rebranding the two titles.

EE Times Europe will be rebranded eeNews Europe, while EDN Europe will become eeDesignNews. The editorial teams for the European titles will remain unchanged, and we’re not expecting any major changes to the titles.

The vertical sites published by EBP will also be renamed with the “ee” branding. So we will be seeing eeNews Analog, eeNews Automotive, eeNews Power Management, eeNews LED Lighting and eeNews T&M sites launched (with the same content as the previous websites).

The official switch of brand will be on 1st April 2017. We’re hoping to get an interview with EBP’s publisher, Andre Rousselot to find out more. We’ll also be talking to Aspencore at embedded world to find out whether they have any plans to use the EE Times and EDN brands in Europe.

Of course the driver behind the change is Arrow’s acquisition of the UBM titles. I think it’s hard to read too much into the move: frankly I would have been surprised if they didn’t stop licencing the brands. We can guess that the media acquisition fever that Arrow had isn’t going to be quite as virulent this side of the Atlantic (surely EBP would have been an obvious acquisition for them?) and of course Arrow clearly does want control of the titles they own.

Nick Flaherty Becomes A Permanent Addition To The EE Times Europe Editorial Team

May 16th, 2016

Nick takes over from Paul Buckley as the power editor at EE Times Europe as well as reporting test and measurement news. EE Times Europe is a favourite technology publication of the Napier Team and our clients who have received some excellent coverage.

For nearly 25 years, Nick Flaherty an avid technology writer, analyst and consultant has been keeping us all up to date with news from the semiconductor and electronics markets. His experience includes editing a wide range of magazines and newsletters all focussed on technology.

Nick is renowned for providing detailed expert technical comment and his skills have been utilised by some of technology’s biggest names including Philips and Texas instruments. In addition to writing for and editing technology publications, Nick also dedicates his time to The Embedded Blog covering hardware and software news and remains the technology editor at Unmanned System Technology Magazine.

We look forward to working with Nick in his new role and wish him all the best in his newest appointment as a permanent team member at EE Times Europe.

EE Times relaunches as a community site

July 3rd, 2013

On 1st July, EE Times relaunched as UBM Tech’s first community site. Later this year Light Reading and InformationWeek will follow suit. UBM’s goal for the community sites is to give tech decision-makers access to peer-based insights through moderated discussions, blogs and social media.

This is an interesting move, and may prove challenging to realise. Whilst it’s not true the engineers don’t participate in social media – there are many active discussions forums – few sites have been able to get engineers to engage in conversations around products and technologies. Whilst EE Times is one of the few sites that has the scale to be able to achieve this, it will be interesting to see whether there will be a huge change in the level of interaction on the site, or if most of the content continues to be generated by the professional journalists on the UBM Tech team.

Can EE Times Europe beat Google?

November 16th, 2012

OK, I admit it. I went into my meeting with EBP at electronica with a little smirk on my face. They were about to tell me about their new electronics industry search engine, which was clearly a stupid idea as the resources and expertise at Google are several orders of magnitude higher than those at EBP. Nice idea. But you’re not going to do better than Google.

Then I saw the results from eetsearch.com. This has to be wrong, I thought. But no! I put in more and more search terms, and consistently the results were better than Google. Wow!

EBP has taken a very simple approach to removing the rubbish and the spam from search results: don’t include those sites in the index. In fact they currently only index about 4000 sites. The approach they’ve taken is to only include component manufacturers’ websites in the index and SERPs. It definitely works as for most search terms, the results returned by eetsearch.com were actually better than Google. This was particularly true when you search for generic terms such as "microcontroller".

The site plans to make money by selling advertising. You can buy adverts around a keyword on cost-per-month basis, and I’m sure that there will be no problems in selling the ad space on keywords such as "op amp" and "microcontroller".

But the big question – will anyone use the site – is a major issue. There have been many attempts at search engines, some of which have produced great results. But to get someone to switch the results need to be much, much better. Will engineers remember to use the site for the searches they do that are component-related, or will it be less effort to trawl through the more spammy results on Google or Bing? It will be interesting to see the traffic figures in six months’ time!

EETimes Europe gets new embedded editor

November 9th, 2011

EETimes Europe has strengthened its editorial team with the appointment of Nick Flaherty as Embedded Editor. Nick is looking for technology and product news from embedded companies, and will also maintain an industry events calendar.
In addition to the position at EETimes Europe, Nick will remain an industry freelancer, and tells me he is excited about the prospect of continuing and expanding his role as editorial director of leading networking group SiliconSouthWest (www.siliconsouthest.co.uk) and founder and editor of SouthWest Innovation News (www.swinnovation.co.uk).

EE Times launches subscription-based newsletter

October 29th, 2010

UBM formed UBM Electronics and immediately announced the first new product from the division: EE Times Confidential, a subscription-based newsletter. In fact the newsletter isn’t entirely new – if you go to the site, you’ll see back issues listed from March, although clearly the company has decided that now is the time to push for subscriptions.
In general I’m very supportive of publishers asking readers to pay for publications. My logic is simple: if readers pay, then they will demand high-quality editorial content that provides in-depth analysis and new insight. If this happens, journalists will get the recognition they deserve.
But will the venture work? It’s going to be difficult to decide what is premium content and what should be published on the EETimes.com website. However EE Times has successfully charged for other products such as webinars, and I’m sure if the content is good enough, people will pay.
Of course for many Europeans the idea of paying for electronics publications isn’t new: for example Elektronik and ElectroniqueS are two high-profile publications with paying subscribers. I’d like to think more publications in Europe would be able to charge for content, although with many publications cutting editorial resources dramatically over recent years generating content of sufficient quality might prove too much of a challenge for some European publishers.

Thoughts on the "EE Times acquisition of EDN"

September 30th, 2010

There has been a lot of talk about the “EE Times acquisition of EDN”. Of course there has been no such thing – UBM (owners of EE Times) have purchased Canon Communications (owners of EDN as well as several medical titles).
For the electronics industry, the end result is that EE Times now controls EDN…except in Europe. Advertisers in the US must be worried about one publisher having such a dominant position, although hopefully this will mean that they can invest in the high quality editorial we all expect from both titles.
Now that the dust has settled, I though it was a good time to post a few thoughts on Napier’s YouTube Channel.

EE Times launches new website

July 12th, 2010

EE Times Group has launched their new EE Times (US) website, which now includes all the division’s different publications (Embedded.com, for example, previously wasn’t part of the EETimes.com site). Apart from some minor teething troubles – the heavily-promoted links to the tour of the new site didn’t work – the site is definitely a very impressive resource, and I think that the design will grow on me (I’m not a huge fan of the mix of rounded and right-angled corners on the home page).

European marketing professionals must ask, “Will a great EETImes.com mean I don’t need to do local marketing?” I certainly don’t think that this is the case. If we forget the hugely important factor of local language, I still believe that local websites will dominate the majority of online reading for engineers in Europe – at least for the time being. Habit, promotion through print publications and local content are all going to ensure strong traffic to local sites.

In the long term, however, I’m sure EE Times Group will try to grab more and more traffic from Europe, as well as the globe’s other continents. EE Times has the benefit of scale: the 21 topics within “Design” and 17 product categories is more than any European editorial team has been able to pull together (elektroniknet.de, for example, has 11 categories that span both design and products). Only time will tell whether the ability to produce highly specific content will be sufficient to attract European engineers’ eyeballs away from local sites.

EE Times finds engineers don’t like Twitter

June 24th, 2010

The EE Times declaration that “Engineers don’t like Twitter” was interesting – the results mirror some of the conclusions from our own survey of social media habits of European engineers. We also found that superficial social networking simply wasn’t important to engineers, who preferred the more task-orientated social interaction offered by forums.

It’s interesting that, despite the amount of effort being put into developing new social media tools, engineers’ online habits haven’t changed much. As an FAE 15 years ago, one of my jobs was supporting customers through internet newsgroups. Although these newsgroups have generally been replaced by forums managed by vendors, the social media interaction that gets engineers the results they need has barely changed in the last one and a half decades.

New embedded editor for EE Times Europe

May 31st, 2010

It’s great to see that really good editors are in demand. Colin Holland, who has shared his coverage between the US and European EE Times titles, has been snapped up full time by EE Times Group (the American publisher). I understand that Phil Ling will be named as Colin’s replacement as Embedded Editor for EE Times Europe.

Both these editors have outstanding knowledge of the embedded industry, and it’s great to see demand for such high-quality talent from EE Times (on both sides of the Atlantic). I’d like to wish them both the best of luck in their new roles. If any more details are forthcoming in the official announcement, I’ll cover them here on Napier News.

The EE Times view of publishing in the future

March 9th, 2010

EE Times Group put on an interesting presentation during Embedded World to talk about their plans for the future, and clearly most of the future is online. They plan to launch a social networking community called EE Life (although to be honest it really seemed to be a revamp of their existing forums).

The focus for EE Times is clearly to reach people – particularly in Europe – through online activities. Of course the situation is confused by the fact that EBP, publisher of EE Times Europe, is effectively competing for the European online audience (and arguably the worldwide online audience). However, I was pleased to see that EE Times Group seems to be trying to identify new approaches that deliver value to both the audience and advertisers.

I was particularly interested to hear about some successes with webinars that require attendees to pay to attend. If EE Times can negotiate the path between ensuring that content delivers great value for money for the audience whilst still providing a platform for the company presenting (i.e. the “advertiser”), then this could be a great source of both revenue for EE Times Group as well as providing an engaged audience for the advertiser. The test will be whether EE Times has the strength to stop companies turning these events into puffy product pitches. I hope the approach works, and would expect to see other publishers follow suit.

It’s interesting that EE Times Group is openly saying that the time where all online information is free is about to end. Paid-for webinars are just the start of the content for which they will charge, and the group is following in the footsteps of some mainstream titles, most notably Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers. Although this isn’t going to make me many friends amongst readers, I think that paywalls for high quality information are inevitable. Of course the question is where the bar will be set: I guess the line will be different from one industry to the next – and suspect that engineers might be very reluctant to part with money for anything but the highest value content. I can’t see sites that simply use press release information and derive most of their traffic from Google getting paying subscribers, but it’s not clear whether curation of good content will be enough or if people will only pay for unique content that is written in-house and that adds substantial intellectual or technical value.

I guess the good news for publishers is that publications in our industry have – and still do – get paying subscribers. Examples range from Microprocessor Report, a publication I subscribed to when I was an engineer and that now costs more than $1500 for an annual international subscription to local language titles such as ElectroniqueS and Elektronik.

EE Times Group also gave a “sneak preview” of their embedded research study. Of course it’s great information – it always is. Like most people at the event, however I was disappointed that the slides were rushed through so quickly that it was impossible to take in all the data – I didn’t know whether EE Times Group wanted us to know the results or not! However it was great to see that FreeRTOS was included in the study for the first time, and can now claim to be “the world’s most popular RTOS”. FreeRTOS isn’t currently a Napier client, but what Richard Barry has done amazes me, and I’m more than happy to give him a plug!

EE Times Europe revamps website and switches domain

March 8th, 2010

EE Times Europe has refreshed the layout of the website. The new design maintains the familiar EE Times look, so readers should not have any major problems with the new site.

At the same time EBP has quietly shifted from the EETimes.eu domain to surprisingly unwieldy electronics-eetimes.com. The old local domains such as eetuk.com route to individual landing pages, although the content on these pages is the same as the site’s home page. This presumably allows EE Times to easily reverse their decision to drop the local sites.

Quite why the European site has chosen to switch domains hasn’t been made public. A quick whois lookup shows that the ownership of all the “old” domains has not been transferred to EBP, suggesting that perhaps they didn’t gain control over these domains when acquiring the rights to publish EE Times Europe.

A quick search on Google for “EE Times Europe” brings up results from the old eetimes.eu in first place, eetuk.com is next, and then results from eetimes.com appear. The new domain electronics-eetimes.com makes its first appearance at seventh in the SERP. Searching for “EE Times” didn’t produce any results from the new domain until the third page.

Of course this is early days for the domain and the old eetimes.eu domain continues to redirect to the new domain, so I don’t expect any immediate problems other than perhaps email newsletters getting caught in spam filters until recipients whitelist the new domain. The long-term implications, however, are interesting. Presumably EBP is trying to increase the total traffic to the EE Times Europe site, rather than focusing specifically on growing a European audience. Whether this is what advertisers want remains to be seen. I’ll also be watching to see if EE Times Group decides to do anything different with the “old” domains.

Julien Happich named editor-in-chief of EE Times Europe

September 23rd, 2009

Julien Happich has joined EETimes Europe as Editor in Chief, replacing Peter Clarke who will remain with Techinsights in a new function after the recent reorganization. Julien is well known in the European electronics publishing scene, having worked at EPN for almost 10 years. Julien is an editor with real technical expertise, and has a masters degree to prove it!
We were amused to see some unattributed quotations about Julien in the news release we received, claiming fFirst reactions from the PR community and colleagues were enthusiastic: “Julien is an brilliant choice – he has excellent ideas” , “Good choice! He’s a top bloke and very well-respected”, “Great move!” Obviously EBP are not going to be shy in promoting their newly-acquired titles! In fact we’re also delighted that Julien has taken the role: he’s a great choice, one we would absolutely endorse.
When I wrote about the acquisition of EE Times Europe a couple of days ago, I was pretty upbeat about the prospects for the magazine. I’m confident that the new setup will prove to be a great opportunity to grow the title and am sure that Julian will be a key player in ensuring that success.

EE Times to drop French and German sites

December 22nd, 2009

Although there has been no official announcement, I understand that one result of the sales of EE Times Europe is that local sites will be dropped, meaning that EE Times will no longer provide news in French and German. Although the publication had a number of local sites, the dropping of the other sites (Israel, Eastern Europe, etc) is unlikely to disappoint as the differences between the local and European sites were minimal. Although the crowded German market is perhaps a good reason why EE Times might not gain a significant share, it’s disappointing to see yet another publisher pull out of France. It’s inconceivable that the French market can only sustain one publication, and I hope to be able to tell you of a new launch in France before the end of the year.

André Rousselot buys EE Times Europe and MWEE

September 18th, 2009

European Business Press SA (EBP), the Brussels-based publishing company that is owned by TechInsights has been sold to André Rousselot. The company will continue to publish EE Times Europe as well as Microwave Engineering Europe and their associated web sites, EET.eu, mwee.com and some European DesignLines.
André has been driving these publications in the intervening years, so does this change actually matter? I think it does. And I think it is good news for EE Times Europe and MWEE. By moving to the franchise model in Europe, TechInsights can focus on developing the US title, which in turn will benefit the European titles by enhancing the content they can access. André is able to focus on tweaking the formula to meet the specific needs of the European market.
This has to be a great deal for André, who sold his publication business to CMP about nine years ago. He has definitely been successful in selling at the top of the market, and buying at the bottom!
Unsurprisingly the ESC shows were not included in the sale, although I was surprised to hear that Embedded Systems Europe also was not included – particularly as the publication recently was distributed as a supplement in EE Times. I hope that this move means that TechInsights will focus on building and developing the magazine in its own right, rather than simply seeing it as a vehicle to promote the embedded shows in Europe.
I’ll be watching closely to see the impact of this move: will André, who has always run a low-overhead cost-effective , be able to continue to focus his investments in high-quality editorial? How will this move affect Reed, the other big pan-European publisher?
Perhaps the best news about the deal is that we know that the key editorial figures will remain in their roles, and I also understand that a significant announcement about additional editorial resources is expected soon. Keep checking Napier News to find out more!

EE Times grows circulation, cuts frequency and shrinks pages

November 21st, 2008

TechInsights has announced that it will increase the circulation of EE Times Europe to 70,000 in 2009, making it the largest circulation electronics title in Europe. To increase the circulation so much (even if the increase is digital rather than print circulation) is an aggressive move in potentially very tough times, but represents a very positive vote of confidence in the European electronics market.

At the same time the frequency will drop to monthly, although with four special issues planned for 2009 (Test & Measurement; Avionics and Defense Electronics; Automotive; and Smart Sensors, Sensor Networks & Medical Electronics) in practice the number of issues planned is only a couple fewer than 2008.

TechInsights has also decided to change the format of the title to A4, and presumably the reduction in size will help with printing and postage costs.

To me this is a very positive move. Although I’m not completely convinced that engineers want magazines sent less frequently because they get the news from websites, as TechInsights argues, moving to a monthly frequency must make good business sense. The increased circulation is a very positive move, and is clearly designed to take business away from EPN. I’m actually quite happy to see the focus on electronic distribution – in the long term this must be the way forward, and as the displays that engineers use get better and better, I’m sure that reading magazines onscreen will become the norm. Perhaps the only question is the promise that the increase in circulation will be focused on the Central and Eastern European countries – in the past Eastern European circulation has been seen as “less valuable” by advertisers, and I look forward to being able to analyse the new circulation figures in detail.

EE Times (US) cuts editorial staff, starts debate

July 2nd, 2007

There has been quite a stir about the cutbacks at CMP, particularly the decision to lay off Richard Goering, effectively ending their dedicated editorial staff for EDA products. The transition of US print titles to online, appears to be happening rapidly (but is has not [yet?] hit Europe with the same impact) and this has driven CMP to make a fairly ruthless decision about EDA coverage.
Basically the problem with EDA companies is that they don’t advertise (which ultimately means someone else has to pay the wages of the EDA editor). Lou Covey, a respected owner of a PR agency on the west coast was told by a CMP manager that, “Lou, we can no longer support industry segments that fail to produce a discernible revenue stream.” A fair enough comment, but clearly there is no pretence that advertising and editorial are completely independent. This lead Chris Edwards to post a story on his blog that explains EDA’s media problem or why I have come to dislike start-ups.
Rather worryingly the trend now is towards sites that regurgitate press releases and offer little or no editorial input – something that was discussed by John Cooley at his Deepchip site. Possibly more worrying for publishers is that if everything should move online, the ability to drive revenue is determined by inventory of ads, and few sites – if any – could sustain the cost of quality editorial inputs with the level of page impressions available. Print simply delivers more pages per engineer per month.
What’s the answer? We’re actually fairly optimistic at Napier. We don’t think print is dead (or dying) in Europe, and the fact that many publications have been open about the presence of some link between advertising and editorial coverage means that potential advertisers know the rules of the game. In Europe we still have some publications making a substantial income from subscriptions, and indication that people really do read print titles!

EE Times adds PDF option

November 28th, 2006

Starting with the November 27th edition, EE Times is offering a one click PDF download option, as well as the online reader. Although this might seem like a step back to the days when the electronic version was distributed by QMags, we think this is a really good move, allowing an archive of old issues to be kept, and accessed in the industry-standard PDF format.

EE Times Europe finally launches

September 12th, 2006

EE Times drops PDF version

July 4th, 2006

EE Times has switched from PDF format to NXTbook Media’s browser-based reader. Although the title still has a small proportion of subscribers taking the online version (when compared with some European titles), it is clear that the move means we’re all likely to be reading magazines in some fancy online browser format, rather than the more straigntforward PDF version. Although the magazines will inevitably claim the browser formats they have chosen are based on the best technology for the magazine’s readers, clearly “The Selling Opportunities” (as NXTbook Media puts it) with toolbar ads, audio and video available is a key driver to these formats.

EE Times European websites go live

June 6th, 2006

The launch of the new EE Times websites has been completed succesfully, with EE Times sites for Europe, Germany, France, UK, Scandinavia, Israel, Eastern Europe and Russia. As planned, the Scandinavian site keeps the Elektronik i Norden branding, with all the other sites using EE Times branding. We understand CMP is close to securing the EETimes.eu domain name, but this wasn’t completed at the time of writing.

CMP announce launch of EE Times Europe

April 4th, 2006

Yesterday CMP presented their plans for the launch of EE Times as a print brand in Europe. Although the publisher has used the brand for the English, German and French online properties, these sites have been small players in the European electronics media.

Although the announcement was one of the worst-kept secrets in the European media, we still discovered some interesting information. Most importantly, no announcement was made about who will be editor-in-chief. Richard Wallace promised an announcement before the first issue, although we think that it may be tough to find a suitable candidate who is prepared to live in Brussels, where he said the editor would be based. There will be a re-design of the local EE Times websites, with the UK site replaced by an EE Times Europe site, and a daily English-langauge newsletter. Also local sites for Russia, Israel and Eastern Europe will be added to the website portfolio, although the content of all local sites will include English-language content as well as local language. The plans for the new sites don’t appear to be particularly well developed, as there was no commitment for the Israeli site to be in Hebrew, and complete confusion over the challenge of finding a local language for Eastern Europe. There was a promise of having local correspondants for all local sites, although there is clearly a lot for CMP to learn about Eastern Europe before they can launch.

Editorial content for the print publication will be primarily global, with local news taking a back seat. This makes sense, as it minimises the costs of writing the publication, and differentiates it from local publications, although the demand for locally-biased electronics news has been clearly demonstrated across Europe; the demand for a global newspaper in what will be a foreign language for most subscribers has not been tested in Europe. Bizzarely the promise for the websites is for local news to be the main focus. We believe that – if there is to be a large volume of content – the EE Times Europe site is not going to be hugely different from that on the main (US) site, giving limited incentive for European engineers to choose the European site. The non-English language sites are a different matter, and will probably be seen as a single site that gives access to local-language news and the vast library of EE Times content (in English).

The magazine will publish twice a month (actually only 20 issues per year), starting September 06. Finally the circulation will be re-qualified, with the goal of achieving 45K print subscribers and 10K digital edition subscribers. A BPA audit will be held in November, although it’s likely that the re-qualification will only be partially completed.

So, will it be successful? At Napier we believe that the introduction of the EE Times brand, and the creation of a strong editorial team will make the magazine successful. Inevitably advertising will increase from the USA, where marketing managers will like the idea of a familiar name. The real question is whether all this effort will be financially worth it – EXE had a reletively-low cost model. During the presentation, CMP claimed that they are only aiming for an average issue size of 48 pages – roughly the same as EXE. With the increased costs of an improved circulation, and the promise of a real strengthening of the editorial team, we’d be very surprised if standing still (in terms of advertising per issue) would be seen as success.

2006 EE Times ACE Awards Call for Entries

September 30th, 2005

We don’t generally cover the US media, but thought it would be worth pointing out that the deadline for the 2006 EE Times ACE Awards is 31st October. The judges will then have a full five months to toss coins, throw darts, and do whatever else they do to choose the winners in the seven categories, as the awards will not be presented until 4th April 2006.

EE Times redesigns and highlights European news

March 16th, 2005

EE Times has launched a new look and structure to the website. Amongst the enhancements are links on the EE Times homepage to news stories posted on the UK, German and French EE Times sites as well as the Swedish site run by those wonderfully nice people at Elektronik i Norden. The European sites have yet to benefit from the new design, so you get a nice retro feel as you click through to the European stories.

Posting news in different languages isn’t really a move that will benefit the majority of the American users of the EE Times site. We suspect that this move is a recognition that – with far fewer stories posted each day than the main .com site, and with European stories also featured on the .com site – the local EE Times sites are not getting as much traffic as CMP would like. This move will direct some of the European engineers that are going direct to EETimes.com to the additional useful local content that is available in their own language, boosting traffic to the European websites.

EETimes launches wireless design website

January 25th, 2005

Although this is really a US publication, with much of the leading edge wireless design happening in Europe, www.WirelessNetDesignLine.com will be an important medium to address European engineers. Interestingly, though, there is not yet a European editor working on the site – unlike commsdesign.com.

Edited by Robert Keenan – the respected CMP editor, the site will “contain targeted coverage of various exciting

new areas of wireless communication design technologies”. It’s good to know that they keep covage to exciting areas – I guess they’ll skip the any areas of technology that are dull!

by Admin

Design & Elektronik | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about Design & Elektronik up to December 2018.

ZigBee & Co - Design & Elektronik Developers' Forum

April 2nd, 2005

Design und Elektronik will be holding their short-range wireless network forum ZigBee & Co” on 20th April in the Europaforum II, Munich. In addition to academics, the leading companies, including Jennic, ChipCon and Freescale will be presenting.

Call for Papers - D&E "Kfz-Elektronik" Forum

October 4th, 2004

Design & Elektronik have issued a call for papers for their Kfz-Elektronik (vehicle electronics) forum that will be held on 11th May 2005. The deadline for papers is 27th January 2005, and abstracts can be submitted in either German or English.

One month until the D&E developer forums

September 7th, 2004

Design und Elektronik will be running forums covering low-power design, control and piezo-electric ceramics on 5th October.

by Admin

Markt & Technik | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about Markt & Technik up to December 2018.

Markt&Technik 40% discount for 40th anniversary issue

May 24th, 2016

Markt&Technik is celebrating its 40th anniversary in issue 26, which will be published June 24th 2016. This special issue will look back at the development of the electronics industry over the last 40 years, and to encourage advertisers they are offering an anniversary discount of 40% off the ratecard prices for all adverts, which may be a regular product/branding ad, or a congratulatory ad (for the kind and generous advertisers!). The copy deadline is Friday June 10th.

Markt&Technik to publish electronica 2014 show daily

May 31st, 2014

It’s good to hear that, yet again, Markt&Technik will publish a show daily during electronica. The title will have a 50/50 split between English and German articles, and a total distribution of 60,000 copies, including being placed at train stations and hotels, as well as within the show ground. There will also be an editorial office at electronica, helping journalists to quickly write about the news from the show (although smart marketers will make sure they pitch their stories some time in advance).

Form more information, visit the media section of the Elektroniknet site.

"Markt&Technik" to publish productronica 2013 official show daily

April 30th, 2013

The team at Markt&Technik do such a great job of publishing show dailies for the major exhibitions. So it’s easy to forget how difficult it is to produce a new issue every day, especially when the journalists have crazy days filled with briefings from exhibitors. As it happens every year, perhaps it’s not “news” that the team will be publishing the show daily for 2013, but I for one really appreciate the work that the team at Weka – and the journalists in particular – put in to publishing these show dailies. Thanks!

La Elfa 2012 shows Markt &Technik and Elektronik maintain leadership

October 31st, 2012

The results of the recent La Elfa study are out. Some of the interesting findings are:

Social media is still having little impact on engineers. Only 6.5% use Facebook in their work, and perhaps surprisingly just 1.8% of engineers use twitter. Use of LinkedIn is over 10%, and around 27% of engineers use XING, which still remains strong in Germany.

Trade magazines remain the most popular source of information – in Germany they even out-perform manufactures” websites – and smartphone apps have overtaken social networks when it comes to engineers finding information.

43% of engineers and 53% of managers read publications at home, and around 7% read on the way to work: the use of public transport continues to be a significant difference between Europe and most of the USA.

The relative ranking of the publications in Germany remains fairly static, with M&T and Elektronik the first choices for news and technical articles respectively, whilst the Weka titles and Elektronik Praxis maintain their lead on other magazines.

German advertising recovered in 2010

January 21st, 2011

Good news for publishers in Germany – the latest mediaskop advertising statistics research, undertaken by Vertriebsunion Meynen, shows a 9.2% year-on-year increase in 2010.
Unsurprisingly Markt&Technik, Germany’s weekly publication, saw the biggest increase and retains the largest market share. Second place continues to be a battle between Elektronik and Elektronikpraxis, with Elektronik sneaking into the number 2 slot last year.

Markt & Technik to publish electronica show daily

May 14th, 2010

Another electronica year, and unsurprisingly M&T will again publish the official show daily. Although this isn’t really a surprise, the facts are impressive: four issues, an editorial team of 16, and a total of more than 60,000 copies – this is a huge undertaking! Perhaps the idea of a print publication for a physical trade show is becoming a little antiquated, but with trade show attendance in Germany remaining strong, and half the content of the show daily in English for international visitors, I’d expect the show daily to be an editorial and commercial success again.

M&T editor wins VDE Prize

February 19th, 2010

Corinne Schindlbeck, the Markt&Technik who covers management & careers, has been awarded the Media Prize Technology by the VDE Südbayern, Germany. It’s great to see electronics industry bodies award prizes to journalists, and as an engineer I am particularly pleased that the prize went to someone who is encouraging young people to choose engineering as a career. Congratulations Corinne!

Markt & Technik to publish daily electronica newspaper

May 9th, 2008

Unsurprisingly – given the quality of the publication in previous years – Markt & Technik will again publish the electronica show daily. With half the articles in English, the show daily caters for international visitors as well as German attendees. electronica is the biggest electronics component show in the world, so it’s important to make the most of your presence, and we’ve seen clients use the show daily very effectively. Contact Napier for more information on the show daily and other ways to fill your stand with customers!

New UK advertising sales representative for Markt&Technik, DESIGN & ELEKTRONIK and elektroniknet.de

October 1st, 2007

From 1st October 2007, Alastair Swift will take on the role of representing two of the key Weka electronics titles in the UK, Markt&Technik and DESIGN&ELEKTRONIK, as well as the publisher’s online site, www.elektroniknet.de. Alastair currently focuses on Penton publications in both the US and Europe, although in a previous role he represented these titles, and therefore has extensive knowledge of these titles and the German market in general.

New editor for T&M at M&T

January 8th, 2007

Nicole Kothe has joined Markt und Technik to cover test and measurement, taking over from Andreas Knoll.

Willem Ongena returns to Markt&Technik

December 14th, 2006

After spending around six months on another project, the popular editor Willem Ongena has returned to his role at Markt & Technik. Willem will continue to cover the same areas of communications components, LEDs and laser diodes.

M&T Productronica special issue

October 3rd, 2005

As well as the Productronica preview and show issues, Weka will be publishing a Productronica special issue of Markt & Technik on 28th Oct. Only in Germany could you manage to publish three issues around a show! The special issue will make the customary offer of a free company profile for all advertisers booking at least a quarter page.

by Admin

Elektroniknet | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about Elektroniknet up to December 2018.

elektroniknet.de forms a new online business network

January 10th, 2017

Elektroniknet.de, the online publication from WEKA journal elektronik, has developed a strong following from the electronics industry. WEKA also publishes the famous Markt&Technik, elektronik automotive and DESIGN&ELEKTRONIK, and with these publications serving distinct yet overlapping market sectors, elektroniknet.de have developed a new online business network that reflects these industry cornerstones.

To better support the individual needs of these sectors, elektroniknet.de have split the online content for these respective publications and have created websites for each. These new sites: elektronik.de, markt-technik.de, design-elektronik.de and elektronik-automotive.de have a new layout and have a fully responsive design, making all their content accessible from mobile devices, perfect for catching up on the latest news on the go.

25 editors are now working for this new business network, making it the largest professional electronics business network in the world. To date the performance data of this new network is impressive Likewise impressive with 13,82 million page impressions annually (IVW-Online 08/2015 – 07/2016), nearly 40,000 news, product and professional articles, as well as 12,000 companies in the comprehensive supplier directory.

We look forward to working with these new online platforms and wish them all the best with the business network!

Elektroniknet.de achieves a million

August 5th, 2009

Congratulations to Elektroniknet.de, which achieved 1,050,689 page impressions in July – the first time the site has had over 1 million visitors in a month! Congratulations to elektroniknet.de’s superb editor-in-chief Peter Wintermayr and all the online team.

elektroniknet.de: 8M impressions in 2008

January 19th, 2009

Congratulations to elektroniknet.de, which achieved almost 8 million impressions in 2008, showing an annual traffic growth of 45%. The best thing about this is that Weka use IVW to audit the traffic, giving advertisers an additional confidence in the figures.

Computer and Automation breaks away from elektroniknet.de

December 5th, 2008

Weka has decided to move the Computer & Automation content out of elektroniknet.de and onto a site of its own. I think this is a great move, as the content from C&A didn’t quite fit with the Weka electronics titles, and this allows both sites to increase their focus on their specific end-markets.

The new C&A site has a different structure to elektroniknet, and also has a slightly different look and feel. This is great, as the C&A readers now have a website designed specifically for their needs. Of course the traffic on elektroniknet may fall temporarily as the C&A traffic is no longer included, but I would expect the growth of the use of online sites to make up the shortfall very quickly.

elektroniknet launches distribution email newsletter

November 7th, 2008

elektroniknet.de continues to expand its portfolio of email newsletters with the launch of a distribution newsletter. The first issue goes out today, and it will be distributed on a quarterly basis.

elektroniknet.de hits 700k pages in a month

July 27th, 2008

Congratulations to elektroniknet.de, which achived 716,000 page impressions and more than 260,000 visits in June. Elektroniknet is clearly the most-trafficed German site in our industry, benefiting from different print titles to contribute content and promote the site. Elektroniknet plan to capitalise on their success by offering additional skyscraper and expanding banner advert options.

The site is audited by IVW-Online, which provides credibility to the sites traffic figure claims. Although far fewer websites that print titles are audited in our industry, I expect that this will chanage over the next few years, and I’m really pleased to see Weka promoting the benefits of online auditing to European marketing managers.

Elektroniknet has also been able to expand the circulation of its email newsletters, with the regular newsletter and the automotive newsletter both claiming 42,000 recipients. The average open rate of 25-30% is pretty much in line with other publishers, although I have some reservations about the measurement of open rates, particularly in an tech-savvy industry where the figure can be under-reported as recipients are likely to turn off image downloads and therefore never register the fact they opened and read the email.

Elektroniknet guess the score competition

April 30th, 2008

Elektroniknet will run a “guess the score” competition during the European Championships. Sponsorships are available, and the online promotion is likely to prove popular: in fact it will provide the only interest in the event for us Brits after our dismal national teams all failed to qualify!

Elektroniknet to offer web seminars

November 28th, 2007

Elektroniknet.de has added webscasts to it’s online advertsing offering in the 2008 media pack. This is an interesting move that aims to offer archived webcasts on the site. This is a positive move, and something we would expect to be commonplace across European electronics websites in the near future. With a reletively luke-warm response to webscast from European engineers, the qustion is whether this offering is worth the cost, even with the highly-targeted and relevant elektroniknet.de audience. Contact Napier to talk about our views on whether this is the best service for you, or if you’re better simply sticking the video on YouTube.

New UK advertising sales representative for Markt&Technik, DESIGN & ELEKTRONIK and elektroniknet.de

October 1st, 2007

From 1st October 2007, Alastair Swift will take on the role of representing two of the key Weka electronics titles in the UK, Markt&Technik and DESIGN&ELEKTRONIK, as well as the publisher’s online site, www.elektroniknet.de. Alastair currently focuses on Penton publications in both the US and Europe, although in a previous role he represented these titles, and therefore has extensive knowledge of these titles and the German market in general.

Elektroniknet announces vertical approach

March 25th, 2007

Elektroniknet.de is offering sponsorship packages that target vertical markets. The recently re-designed site includes Competence Centers, which is the new term for the “topics pages”, with packages still priced on the CPM basis. A further innovation is the ability to target only a subsection of the Competence Centre, with the following options allowing highly-targeted marketing:

– Control and communication systems; motion control; and image processsing can all be targeted within the Automation section
– Active or passive components can be targeted within the components section
– Hardware or software can be targeted within embedded
– Wireline or wireless can be targeted within communication

This approach should make addressing specific audiences much more cost-effective, particularly for small advertisers with limited budgets.

Elektroniknet.de Design Update

August 20th, 2006

Weka have completed a makeover of the Elektroniknet.de website. Although the key to this site is without doubt the content, the new look is nice (but of course very functional!), and will help in their fight to continue to be the primary portal in Central Europe.

by Admin

Elektronik Journal | Editor moves and other news

This is a summary of all of the blog posts we have written about Elektronik Journal up to December 2018.

Huethig strengthens editorial team with another new journalist

December 1st, 2016

Huethig Verlag has strengthened their editorial team with the addition of Dr. Nicole Ahner, who will work for elektronik journal, elektronik industrie and the website www.all-electronics.de, as well as contributing to AUTOMOBIL-ELEKTRONIK and emobility tec on specific projects.

Dr. Ahner is an engineer (Dr.-Ing.), who has previously worked in the industry. Editor-in-chief, Alfred Vollmer, tells us that her excellent writing skills were a key factor in her appointment.

It’s great to see a publisher investing in the editorial team: this must be a good thing in the long term. Coming on the back of the recent appointment of Dr. Ingo Kuss, it shows how serious Huethig is about creating content engineers will want to read.

Interview with Alfred Vollmer

October 27th, 2016

It has clearly been a very busy time for Alfred Vollmer since he was promoted to editor-in-chief at Hüthig. We finally managed to grab some of his time to talk to him about the promotion and his view of the future for the electronics media in Germany.

Congratulations on the promotion: can you tell us about your new role?

Yes, of course. I’ve now been editor in chief of four print magazines and one website for about half a year. I’m responsible for the print publications elektronik industrie, elektronik journal, AUTOMOBIL-ELEKTRONIK and emobility tec; as well as the website www.all-electronics.de.

Do you plan any changes to the publications in the next year?

Nothing major in mind, however, we constantly watch the market and react in order to meet the needs of our readership.

In cooperation with the VDMA (The German Mechanical Engineering Industry Association), we’ll launch a new congress on February 1 and 2, 2017 in Munich, Germany: Our new medical electronics congress is intended to be a kind of summit meeting for executive managers in the medical electronics community with focus on supporting networking along the entire medical electronics value chain.

In Germany, publications seem to be doing well. Why do you think there is more advertising support for electronics titles in Germany?

Let me ask you another question: why is Germany’s industrial and automotive industry so strong? May be one of the reasons is the German kind of mindset, and part of this mindset is appreciating print and reading the news and stories on paper. With print, it is much easier to get an overview of the latest technologies. While surfing you easily drift away. Our magazines provide carefully prepared content tailored to the needs of the individual readership of our magazines. However, when you search for a specific product that you need for a specific application, the web is a fantastic resource.

Germans like print media, so the reader response is high, which means that print advertising exactly meets the potential buyers of the products.

What do German engineers look for when choosing a publication to read? How do you plan to meet these needs?

German engineers are like engineers all over the world: they need facts and the inputs they really need in order to get their jobs done. The pressure on engineers these days is very high, which means that they need to get their updates in a very efficient way. Therefore, they rely on information sources they can trust. Information is available everywhere, but gathering and sorting information is very time-consuming. We help the engineers to stay up to date in a very time-efficient manner by providing the information they need.

This summer the market research institute “tele research” conducted a reader survey on behalf of our publisher. Tele research found out that 80.5% of the readers say that elektronik industrie provides extensive and complete information. This shows me that all the members of our editorial team really meet the needs of our readership: the design engineers; and we are very happy that 86% of the readers voice the opinion that elektronik industrie reports are objective and factual!

Most German engineers speak and read English to a very high level. Why don’t they just read English-language publications and websites?

The work load on engineers is very high. Whatever makes their work easier is much appreciated, and for a German native speaker reading German IS much easier to understand than any other language. Furthermore, most Germans learned English at school, however, most of them did not live in an English-speaking environment, specifically they were not raised in a country where English is the common language. Therefore, we quite often do not have the cultural literacy of a native speaker. Let me give you an example: When an American talks about some “plain vanilla technology” he just means a very simple technology without any frills, and all the native speakers know this. Germans learn a lot of idioms but at least the first time they read “plain vanilla” they don’t exactly know what it means, and may-be think of ice cream while simultaneously knowing that this doesn’t make any sense at all. Issues like this one are time-consuming to resolve and do not happen while reading German. This is also the reason why we sometimes restructure sentences while editing: in order to facilitate the reception of the contents.

Furthermore, a good German editor edits texts in a way that the reader can easily “inhale” the content of the text. The American journalist Jack Anderson once said about American journalism that it follows the following principle: “First, tell them what you are going to tell them. Second, tell them. Third, tell them what you have told them.” Good German magazine journalism is different as it just follows the “Tell them” and nothing else. We do not have to teach engineers about Ohm’s law anymore. They already know it. The magic of good German magazine journalism is to know what the reader exactly needs to read at a specific point of time. Two decades ago we also explained to our readership that “DSP” means “Digital Signal Processor” but now we take the knowledge about this TLA (three-letter acronym) for granted. And all those who do not already know it can look the TLA up in our abbreviation list at http://www.all-electronics.de/abkuerzungsverzeichnis/.

I am very happy that our editorial team really meets the demands of the readers; otherwise the reader survey wouldn’t state that “almost 60% of the readers say that elektronik industrie has such a high benefit for their work that they would not want to do without it in the future”. 96.1% of the readers find that elektronik industrie is easy to read and comprehensible! I think it will be difficult to get such a feedback from German engineers about English-language publications and websites.

You spent some time working in marketing. Why do you prefer being an editor?

Working in marketing is great, but I prefer being an editor as I can get a much better overview and I am able to meet with a lot of very interesting people.

Why have you been so busy? It has taken several months for us to arrange this interview.

We didn’t have an easy time in our editorial team. Dr. Achim Leitner, who used to be the editor in chief until March 2016, had worked really hard, and it took time to fill the gap just from a capacity perspective. Since October 1, 2016 we have another very experienced team member which is well-known in the industry: Dr. Ingo Kuss is now part of our editorial team and ready to systematically increase his responsibilities. Furthermore, Hans Jaschinski, who has been on sick leave for 2.5 years will be returning to work starting at electronica. And we are still looking for additional editorial talents with strong electronics engineering background in order to grow our editorial team.

What’s your favourite gadget?

My favourite gadget is my precise training heart rate monitor. It allows me to tailor my workout directly to my actual fitness level at the individual time of training. This makes training very effective, and with its GPS functionality and the web connection it is even more fun.

Hüthig publications announce automotive and medial electronics events for 2017

October 12th, 2016

German engineers continue to value conferences and exhibitions, so it’s good to see Hüthig expand its conference programme with the announcement that elektronik journal will – in cooperation with the VDMA (The German Mechanical Engineering Industry Association) – hold a medical electronics congress (www.medizin-elektronik-kongress.de) in Munich, Germany on February 1st and 2nd, 2017. Billed as something very different from the traditional congress for design engineers, this event aims to be a “summit meeting” for executive managers in the medical electronics community. Attendees will particularly be able to benefit from the opportunities to network along the entire medical electronics value chain.

In another announcement, elektronik journal’s sister publication AUTOMOBIL-ELEKTRONIK has announced that their automotive event, often called the “Ludwigsburg congress”, will be held on 27th and 28th June 2017 (unsurprisingly the conference will again be held in Ludwigsburg). This will be the 21st year for this event, which has built a reputation for attracting some of the leading figures in automotive electronics, who provide high-quality keynotes and papers.

Automotive specialist moves from Weka to Hüthig

October 8th, 2016

Dr. Ingo Kuss, who previously worked for Weka Verlag title elektronik automotive has moved to Hüthig to strengthen the editorial resources for AUTOMOBIL-ELEKTRONIK, elektronik industrie, elektronik journal, emobility tec as well as to the online platform www.all-electronics.de. Ingo has extensive experience in the German electronics industry, having previously held roles at Vogel Verlag and Verlag Moderne Industrie (MI).

The move represents a return to elektronik journal for Ingo, because it was the first publication he worked for, when it was owned by Verlag Moderne Industrie. He has now followed this title in a switch to Hüthig.

It’s great to see Ingo continue in our industry, where he has build a strong reputation, and it’s particularly nice that he’s back working on elektronik industry. Although editorial teams are not as large as the peaks of about 20 years ago, the German publishers continue to invest in high-quality journalism, and I’m sure this move will strengthen the reputation and readership of Hüthig’s influential titles.

Fond Farewells and Exciting Handovers at Hüthig

February 24th, 2016

After almost 8 years at the helm of Hüthig’s electronics publication empire, Dr Achim Leitner has decided to leave behind the delights and perils of the publishing world, and head back into the industry he has so fondly written about. Although it is a great loss to journalism, we wish Achim every success in his new role of leading a systems engineering design team.

At the same time, we are equally delighted that Alfred Volmer will be taking over as Editor-in-Chief of AUTOMOBIL-ELEKTRONIK, emobility tec, all-electronics.de and Elektronik Journal, and joint Editor-in-Chief of Elektronik Industrie. With a degree in electrical engineering, Alfred has used his knowledge and experience to focus on writing for several electronics publications over the past 30 years, the last 20 of which have been for a number of the Hüthig flagships.

Napier would like to wish both Achim and Alfred all the very best of luck in their new roles.

New editor at elektronikJOURNAL

January 25th 2012

Ina Susanne Rao (email ina.rao@huethig.de) has joined elektronikJOURNAL to cover power electronics, power supplies, electromechanics, optoelectronics, passive devices and renewable energy. Ina has a variety of experience in both journalism and the electronics industry. After gaining a diploma in Technical Writing at the university in Karlsruhe, she worked in the PR department for a distributor, then gained experience overseas (mainly Far East and South America), and most recently was the editor for an optical technologies publication.

Editorial and advertising departures

December 21st, 2011

Stefanie Eckardt has decided to leave elektronikJOURNAL for a new challenge in the industry, whilst Teun van Hoesel has left his role as International Sales Manager of Elektor to work at an internet agency. The new international advertising contact at Elektor is Wisse Hettinga (w.hettinga@elektor.com).

Hüthig to cut frequency

September 27th, 2010

I understand that Hüthig is planning to cut the frequency of elektronikJOURNAL from monthly to just five special issues in 2011. These would each address specific topics: embedded, power, distribution & services, medical electronics and e-mech. The publisher also plans to cut Automobil Elektronik from six issues per year to five.
The German publications are struggling to make a decent profit in a very competitive market, so it’s not surprising that cuts are going to happen to print issues, and I would expect that Hüthig may not be the only company to take action in 2011. There is some good news, as I understand that the excellent Dr. Achim Leitner will be taking over responsibility for Hüthig’s online presence – all-electronics.de.

Richard Thompson now representing electronikJOURNAL in the UK

January 18th, 2010

Hüthig, publisher of elektronikJOURNAL, has appointed Richard Thompson as their new sales rep in the UK. It makes sense to add elektronikJOURNAL, which is positioned as the publisher’s horizontal title covering design, production and automation, as Richard already represents the three vertical titles: IEE, Productronic and Elektronik Industrie.

EJ and IEE to get new layouts

November 18th, 2009

Huethig Verlag has announced that both elektronikJOURNAL and IEE will have a new layout and design from January 2010. The new look is promised to be “lively”, and the publishers promise that his will mean the titles “stand out of the grey mass of magazines”. We’re promised that the yellow and black colour scheme of elektronikJOURNAL will stay, so it’s a fair bet that the title will continue to stand out!

It’s good to see continued commitment from publishers in the crowded German market, especially as this announcement follows on from an increase in IEE’s circulation from 20,000 to 26,000.

Editor layoffs

April 24th, 2009

Sad to report a couple of editors losing jobs within our industry. Recent layoffs include Phil Ling from Embedded Systems Europe and Marisa Robles Consée from Elektronik Journal. Rüdiger Hahn has also retired from EJ.

Editor interview - Dr. Achim Leitner

January 29th, 2009

I’m so pleased to have been able to conduct a second interview so soon after the first one with Dr Matthias Laasch. I was delighted to be able to interview Dr. Achim Leitner, who took over as editor-in-chief of elektronikJOURNAL on 1st December 2008 from Rüdiger Hahn (although Rüdiger stays with the magazine as a senior consultant). Although Achim has a PhD in Electrical Engineering, previously he held the role of managing editor at Linux Magazin.

What do you most enjoy about your new job?
As you know, I’m kind of returning to my roots: After studying electrical engineering, I spent over a decade in the IT field, especially software development, networking, and security. That provides me an interesting point of view into the electronics field. I’m curious about everything that’s going on in the electronics area and now, I’m able to satisfy that curiosity. The other nice aspect of my new job is that I’ve inherited a
great journal with a great team of journalists which I really enjoy working with.

Which areas of electronics interest you the most?
Hmm, if you really want me to pick some, then I’d choose processors, microcontrollers and DSP, FPGA, as well as all the hard- and software tools.

Do you have any plans to enhance the magazine or website over the next year?
I focus on developing the printed magazine right now, so you can expect to see a stream of enhancements over the upcoming issues. The website is a joint effort of five journals in the electronics field and it has its own project manager, but still I have a heap of ideas how to enhance the service of the website as well.

What is the main factor that makes a press release interesting?
It has to carry real news and needs to be honest. As a journalist, I want to have the facts at hand without digging through a pile of marketing language. So if your write a release, please use clear language and get to the point quickly.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, when you’re not editing elektronikJOURNAL?
Well, I enjoy travelling, meeting friends and go clubbing. And there’s always something to fix in our appartment or some new device that I want to own.

Do you personally prefer to get information in print or online?
That depends. Researching for an article, I basically get information online. Easy to access, up to date, nearly unlimited amount of data and no paper to waste are clear advantages. On the other hand, when I want to explore a new field, read an article or a story, then I clearly prefer print. It’s so much easier to read, portable, independant from light and electricity that I can’t imagine to read everything on a computer screen.

What is your favourite gadget?
That’s a tough one as there is too much stuff to choose from. My all time favorite is the aged handspring visor (a palm clone) that has served me really well over a decade or so and still does. Currently, I’m eager to find a really usefull netbook that has a readable, high-res display, usable keyboard, all kinds of network connectivity, long battery times and still small, ultra portable and affordable.

Stefan Böck leaves Elektronik Journal

April 27th, 2008

Stefan Böck is leaving as editor-in-chief of Elektronik Journal to take over at Austrian monthly publication, die Wirtschaft. Stefan is also bringing the current editor of the Austrian section of EJ, Stefan Strzyzowski, to die Wirtschaft. Rüdiger Hahn will be stepping in as a temporary replacement until a new editor-in-chief can be found. As he ahs previously held that role at EJ he should feel right at home!

E Journal joins E Industrie

August 10th, 2007

Süddeutscher Verlag has decided to consolidate the publishing of electronics titles by moving elektronikJOURNAL from the Österreichischer Wirtschaftsverlag (Austria) to the Hüthig Verlag. Hüthig already publishes Elektronik Industrie, Productronic, IEE and Automobil Elektronik.

The initial reaction to this move might be concern that either elektronikJOURNAL or Elektronik Industry might close, removing duplication. At Napier, however, we think that the reasons for the move are much less threatening: there will probably be some consolidation of sales teams, the main benefit the main benefit will be the reduction in cost of developing online presence for the magazines.

The costs of developing two independant online media platforms that can complete with sites such as Elektroniknet.de is likely to be prohibitive. By creating a single online presence for all the titles, Hüthig will save money and generate more traffic through the promotion of one site in all their print titles. Our prediction is that the two titles will continue to be published the very competitive German market, and the cost savings and increased revenue online will make this a very astute business decision.

New ed for E Journal

January 10th, 2007

Marisa Robles has joined Elektronik Journal to cover manufacturing and Test & Measurement for the magazine. Although still technically a freelancer, this is a long-term arrangement that will enhance the magazine’s existing editorial team.

Changes at elektronikJOURNAL

September 26th, 2006

Elektronik Journal has just announced that the respected ex-editor of the title, Rüdiger Hahn will remain a Senior Consultant beyond 2006; Robert Unseld is the new Managing Editor; and that Stephan Strzyzowski is the new Editor for Austria. All good news. They have also finally announced that Stefan Böck is the “new Chief Editor” as of July 1. Who says that the Internet has reduced the lifetime of news in this industry?

On a more serious note, the changes are all positive for the title, and is an effective use of the talent that exists within the editorial team. We just can’t resist questioning the German approach to food, however, as Rudiger Hahn claims in the press release that he was “brought up on Silicon as a child”.

Another magazine birthday

August 4th, 2005

This year there are lots of magazines promoting anniversaries. We guess that publishers are celebrating the fact that the magazine is still in business, despite the incredibly tough market. The latest is Elektronik Journal, which is publishing a special issue in October and offering a reduced rate of 4,040 euros (rate card 13,400 euros) for a double-page company profile. Contact Napier for more information.

Star media to represent Elektronik Journal

February 7th, 2005

Star Media, the representatives of CMP’s EXE, Embedded Systems Europe and MWEE has been appointed to represent Elektronik Journal – the central-European magazine with the funkiest imagery and also the unique local sections for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. We’ve been waiting a few days to post this, as Star wanted to provide some extra information, but as it hasn’t arrived, we thought we would make something up!

“I’m really pleased to be representing Elektronik Journal,” said Tim Anstee. “The magazine has great editorial, and advertisers like the ability to target Germany, Austria and Switzerland either with the same advert or with specific local ads. I’ll also really enjoy the chance to practice my German – something I’ve not really done since earning my PhD in German grammar.”

by Admin