BANNOCKBURN, IL – North American PCB shipments fell 2.6% in January and bookings dropped 18.7% year-over-year, the IPC said. The book-to-bill ratio remained under parity at 0.91.
Rigid shipments were down 3.5%, and bookings were down 19.2% year-over-year. Flexible circuit shipments were up 14.3%, while bookings were down 10.6%.
The rigid book-to-bill ratio was 0.91; the flex circuit book-to-bill ratio edged up to 0.93.
Rigid PCBs make up an estimated 85% of PCB sales in North America.
The results include 11% of foreign-produced boards.
SAN JOSE – A call for papers has been issued for the International Wafer-Level Packaging Conference scheduled for Sept. 17-19, in San Jose. The conference program will include workshops, and business and technical sessions on wafer-level packaging, 3D/stacked packaging and test. The organizers seek 200-word abstracts with proposed topics. Abstracts should be submitted before Apr. 10 to Melissa Serres at
melissa@smta.org. Full details may be found at
http://www.smta.org/iwlpc.
MINNEAPOLIS – The 2007 Medical Electronics Symposium will be held May 2-3 in Bloomington, MN. A tabletop exhibition will take place on May 2, and a half-day workshop symposium on May 1 will cover issues of reliability in medical electronics and medical device applications. Other topics of the symposium include RoHS/WEEE impact on design; wireless telemetry; process development case studies; substrate materials for medical electronics; design challenges; environmental constraints; emerging technologies; advanced cleanliness requirements; advanced packaging for medical electronics; reliability assessments; software security; safety & risk management; warranty analytics; risk communication and software regulation. The keynote, Neuromodulation – Approaching the Tipping Point, will be presented May 2 at 11:30 am by Christopher Chavez of Advanced Neuromodulation Systems. For more information, please visit
http://www.smta.org/education/symposia/symposia.cfm#medical.
CUPERTINO, CA -- Apple Inc. is seeing continued demand for its Macintosh PCs and expects strong sales of the new iPhone, the company told analysts this week.
Analysts say the company's revenue estimate of $5.1 billion for the June quarter will likely prove conservative.
Read more ...