Connector Industry Books Record Sales in 2022

The connector industry achieved full year 2022 sales growth of +7.8%, reaching global sales of $84.1 billion. This is a new industry record for sales. North America achieved better sales growth than China in 2022. In fact, North America outperformed China in three of the past five years.

ESGT Wishes You a Wonderful Year of the Rabbit!

Season's Greetings!

What is a pin header?

A pin header, or header, is a male connector with one or two rows of metal pins attached to a plastic base. Pin headers with more than two rows are available from some manufacturers. The pins are spaced in uniform intervals (commonly 2.54 mm or 0.1 inch apart) but many spacings are available depending on the application. The female counterpart is sometimes referred to as a female socket header.

What are board-to-board connectors?

Board-to-board (BTB) connectors are used to transmit signals between printed circuit boards (PCBs), and they may include:
Parallel backplane connectors
Mezzanine connectors
Edge card connectors
Flexible Printed Circuit (FPC)

Happy Moon Festival

Baidu unveils autonomous vehicle without steering wheel

The new vehicle will possess autonomous Level 4 capabilities that need no human intervention, with 8 lidars and 12 cameras alongside the car. Lidars are detection systems, similar to radars, which use pulsed laser light rather than radio waves. Apollo Go, Baidu's robotaxi service, has operated over 1 million across 10 Chinese cities since its launch in 2020 and Baidu said in April that it received permits to deploy robotaxis without humans in the driving seat on open roads in Beijing.

What are SMP Connectors?

Subminiature push-on (SMP) connectors are highly shielded, very small interconnects commonly used in miniaturized high frequency coaxial modules and high data rate applications such as antennas, broadband installations, Test & Measurement, and quantum computing. SMP connectors are covered by MIL-STD 348, 326-1 thru -5. The smaller SMPM version is covered by MIL-STD-348; 328-1 thru -3.

MPO Fiber Optic Connectors

Gender MPO connectors can be male or female. Male MPO connectors have two alignment pins protruding from the end of the ferrule; female MPO connectors have holes in the ferrule.
Color coding Singlemode multifiber cable jackets are yellow. Multimode multifiber cable jackets are aqua for OM3 and OM4 (some manufacturers use Erika-violet for OM4) and lime for OM5.
Connector types The MPO-12 (one row of 12 fibers) is the most common type. Higher-density connectors that feature multiple rows of 12 fibers, as well as MPO-16 (one row of 16 fibers) and MPO-32 (two rows of 16 fibers) are also available. Many data centers today use MPO-24 (two rows of 12 fibers).
Standards IEC 61754-7 and TIA 604-5

What are M-Type Sensor Connectors?

• Standards M12 (EC 61076-2-101), M8 (IEC 61076-2-104), and M5 (IEC 61076-2-105:2008)
• Sealing Ingress protection ranges from IP65 to IP69.
• Markets, Sectors, and Applications M-type connectors are widely used in a variety of applications, but prevalently in industrial automation, actuator, sensor, measurement, robotics, automotive industries, and transportation.

What are FAKRA connectors?

FAKRA connectors are used throughout automotive vehicles in applications such as telematic and GPS navigation, entertainment systems, Bluetooth, cellular, keyless entry, climate controls, and radio antennas. They are also used in sensor systems for autonomous controls. Other non-auto applications include outdoor routers, industrial process control boxes, machine-to-machine modules, and IoT devices.

ESGT Wishes You a Happy New Year!

ESGT thanks for your trust and support, and wishes you a happy and prosperous year of Tiger 2022! 

I/O Rectangular Connectors Make the Connection Across Markets

I/O rectangular connectors are anticipated to account for approximately 14.2% of all connectors in 2021, down from 14.4% in 2020. They are the third largest connector product type, exceeded by PCB connectors (anticipated to account for approximately 31.8%) and applications specific (anticipated to account for approximately 19.5%). The primary reason application specific connectors top I/O rectangular sales is because most automotive connectors, including those used in electric vehicles, fall under application specific.

A New Generation of Ethernet Cables and Connectors

Designed to support IEEE 802.3bq 25G/40GBASE-T applications up to 30m, Cat8 cables are fully shielded like Cat7 solutions, but are standardized in ANSI/TIA-568-C.2-1 and deliver the highest possible Ethernet performance for upgrading copper architectures without switching to fiber. Although the standard was published in November 2016, we are just beginning to see a growing array of connectors and jacks for this cable category.

Circular Connector Market Continues to Expand

Circular connectors, representing $4.3 billion or approximately 6.9% of total connector sales in 2020, declined a mere 1.4%. Although sales of cable assemblies using circular connectors did decline in 2020, anticipated growth in 2021 means this product will represent over 9% of the worldwide cable assembly market, ranking behind application-specific and I/O rectangular assemblies.

The Case for Single-Pair Ethernet in Industrial Applications

Single-pair Ethernet (SPE) promises to revolutionize industrial applications with speeds up to 1 gigabit per second (Gb/s) over a single pair. Yet there are still questions surrounding standardization and the benefits of SPE when compared to industrial RJ45 and other standard products.

New Ethernet Standard Approved with up to 400 Gbps Speed

The Ethernet Alliance has taken the opportunity to announce and publish the 802.3cu standard, already finalized, which allows reaching speeds of 100 and 400 Gbps in single-mode fiber optics for each wavelength. Reaching more speed per wave allows less energy to be used, which reduces cost and enables denser networks to be operated with less equipment, which reduces heat.

The Evolution of High-Performance Backplane Technology

By embedding interconnects between daughtercards on and in a backplane, precise electrical paths can be economically duplicated in mass production quantities. Both signal and power can be efficiently distributed by adjusting the width and thickness of the copper conductors. Electrical characteristics, including impedance, crosstalk, and skew, can be tightly controlled. 

Bosch opens German chip plant, its biggest-ever investment

Robert Bosch (ROBG.UL) opened a 1 billion euro ($1.2 billion) chip plant in Germany on Monday, a record investment by the leading automotive supplier as it stakes a claim to equipping the latest electric and self-driving cars. The plant, located in a semiconductor hub near Dresden, opens as the automotive industry battles a global chip shortage, and will increase Bosch’s ability to serve carmakers directly, relying less on third-party manufacturers.

Chip Crisis in Danger Zone as Wait Times Reach New Record

Chip lead times, the gap between ordering a chip and taking delivery, increased to 17 weeks in April, indicating users are getting more desperate to secure supply, according to research by Susquehanna Financial Group. That is the longest wait since the firm began tracking the data in 2017, in what it describes as the “danger zone.”

2020 semi market hit $473bn

Both memory types returned to growth in 2020, with DRAM up 6.7%, NAND up 24.3%. MPU revenue, representing 14% of the entire semiconductor market, increased 12.4% in 2020 driven by laptop and desktop increases as people were forced to work and study from home. Analogue components, also representing nearly 14% of the semiconductor market, saw revenue increase 9% in 2020. The automotive semiconductor market struggled in 2020, experiencing an annual decline of 4.4%, as an initial drop in consumer demand all but stalled auto sales early on in 2020. 
 

QSFP-DD800 MSA GROUP ANNOUNCES INITIAL HARDWARE SPECIFICATION

The new QSFPDD800 1.0 specification is intended to be incremental to the existing QSFP-DD 5.0 specification. As signal integrity and thermal performance remain imperative, the transceiver pads have been optimized to improve signal integrity for 100 Gbps performance per lane without affecting backwards compatibility. The new specification additionally defines a novel 2×1 connector/cage, with cabled upper ports as an option to address signal loss issues associated with tradition PCBs. 

Connector Industry Shows Resilience in a Year of Surprises

The telecom/datacom market managed to achieve modest growth, spurred by two primary factors: increased internet activity as societies transitioned to online models of work, school, and social activities, which required new investments in infrastructure to support increased demand, as well as the continued drive towards 5G, which is creating steady demand for the equipment needed to support widespread activation of the latest generation of broadband.

Hyundai's new electric car has a solar panel roof and can charge other EVs

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 has been officially announced, and this fully electric, mid-size CUV (crossover SUV) comes with a raft of tech as standard – and even more as options, including solar panels on its roof. Hyundai says that the solar panels can add up to 2,000km per year (around 5-6km per day) of additional range if it's driven in sunny environments such as Spain or the south of France. Another fun trick the Ioniq 5 has up its sleeve is the ability to charge other electric vehicles. If its battery level is above 15%, you can plug the new Hyundai into another electric car to charge it.