Surprising European EMS Market Numbers

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The latest annual reports from EMS companies with manufacturing sites in Europe have changed the picture on the European EMS industry quite a bit and caught us by surprise. Yes, you read that correctly: SURPRISE.

If you think market analysis is always correct and able to predict the future exactly, you are mistaken. More importantly, we do not cover up the surprises in order to look perfect. Just look at the European EMS production value, which is stated very differently by various market research companies. Some claim the exact value is €28.45 million, while others give numbers that are even lower. IN4MA's number for Europe is €34.6 billion, and this is only with the addition of 1,576 EMS companies. Assuming that 95% of the European EMS firms in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and 87% of those in the remaining countries were covered, it still leaves about 184 EMS companies in Europe. The majority of these are small companies with up to €10 million in revenues, and they're not included in the statistics.

The biggest surprise is the fact that east European EMS companies topped the west European EMS companies in 2016. About 50.3% of European EMS production was done in east European countries, while 49.7% is manufactured in the western Europe. In 2015, it was the other way around. So far, we had estimated that this would not happen until 2018.

While there are some exports of European EMS companies to other continents, there ire substantially more imports into Europe. At present, our estimate stands at about €5 billion of net imports into Europe, bringing the EMS market in the region to more than €40 billion.