In its second year in Las Vegas, APEX activity bore the weight of the current down cycle reasonably well. Expectations for most were of course very conservative and rightly so. If you were out shopping for a placement machine or a reflow oven or just about any other piece of capital equipment it was certainly a great place to be, as that segment of the food chain has certainly been the hardest hit by the current slowdown and it's clearly a buyer's market.
Nonetheless, companies that had new technologies to present and who did their pre-event promotional homework were satisfied at their results. Several of our clients visited with as many or even more legitimate prospects than they did last year, and Rehm Thermal Systems announced that they took an order on their booth on Wednesday afternoon. DEK continued to receive recognition for both new technologies and superior customer service, winning the Circits Assembly Service Excellence Award for an unprecedented 7th straight year.
Upcoming events in the near term include Nepcon Shanghai next week and SMT Nuremberg shortly thereafter. Similarly scaled expectations seem the order of the day, while lots of speculation about November's bi-annual Productronica abound. Next year at this time I expect we'll be told that Q2 2009 was the the bottom of the trough...let's hope so. Meanwhile, marketing is muscle and those with well defined strategies are positioning themselves and acquiring share and special recognition now.
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