As Chinese companies and visitors flock back to the Electronica trade show in Munich, Steve Rogerson asks if the recent US election result will impact their ability to trade.

While walking round the eighteen halls of the Electronica trade show in Munich last week, one could have been forgiven for thinking that the last few years had not happened. The 60-year-old show seemed back to its pre-Covid days with 3480 exhibitors from 59 countries; even the Chinese companies were back with large block of stands showing a wide range of wares. Overall, three-quarters of the exhibitors were from abroad.

I singled out the Chinese companies there because they have been under an unwanted spotlight lately with many raising security concerns, and Donald Trump, who was confirmed as US presidential election winner in the days before the show started, threatening to impose severe tariffs on Chinese imports.

Those with whom I spoke on this were playing it a little cautious, waiting obviously to see what the details would be before committing to any strategy. A good example is Chinese IoT module maker Quectel (www.quectel.com).

“We are not speculating,” said Charlotte Rubin from Quectel. “We have to see what ends up happening. A lot of different numbers are being thrown around.”

However, the company is still planning ahead and Charlotte told me it was already in talks with a US manufacturing partner and would move production to the USA if necessary. Quectel already has manufacturing facilities outside of China in Malaysia.

“So we are ready for it regardless of what happens,” she said.

Andreas Burghart, senior product manager at Digi (www.digi.com), said a lot of its customers were already saying they were not allowed to use modules from China. He told me of one person that had designed a product with a Chinese module in place and his boss told him to change it.

“So they came to us,” he said.

But Florian Denzin, director of product strategy at Telit Cinterion (www.telit.com), said there were different layers of problems with Chinese components.

“There is supply-chain awareness,” he said. “It is linked not just to origin and security but to longevity. Will it continue being available? There might be security requirements.”

But he said the main issue was the lifecycle.

“You need product families so people can update,” he said. “This aspect is becoming more important. It means people look at the products differently.”

On security, he said this had been a hot topic at the show.

“Customers are becoming more aware of security and are asking questions,” he said. “It is the regulatory part where they have questions and it is application related. The challenge is they have to get so many different components and get them all to fit together and make sure it is secure.”

On tariffs on Chinese goods, he said it would depend on what they looked like.

There were around 80,000 visitors from 100 countries at the show. Germany was not unsurprisingly top in the number of visitors, but behind Italy in second was third-placed China.