Market trends in automotive electronics

Despite variable economic performance in most industrialised regions of the world and slow growth in car output, the automotive electronics industry has enjoyed steady growth at an average rate of 11% per year for the last 3 years. This strong performance has been driven by a number of factors that are common to all of the major car producing regions: emission control, fuel economy, safety, security and convenience. Car makers are striving to achieve improvements in all of these areas in response to legislation, competition and customer demand. In 1997 the market for automotive electronics in the major car producing regions was worth $18.9 billion. Further penetration of electronic controls and product innovation is expected to increase electronic demand to $25.3 billion by 2002. Powertrain applications continue to account for the high value application segment. In-vehicle networking and driver information systems are seen as critical technology application areas.