ABSTRACT
The world electronics industry is characterised by extreme diversity on the one hand and a move towards convergence on the other. Thus, a host of different industries are discernible, ranging from the manufacture of radios and calculators at one end of the complexity spectrum to the production of supercomputers and digital exchanges at the opposite end. A craving for stability is specially sought by firms subject to the volatile semiconductor cycle, but it also informs the decisions of defence-electronics companies obliged to come to terms with the defence cycle. Responding to perceptions of international tension, defence budgets expand and contract in a rhythm markedly at variance with the world trade cycles which regulate the demand for civilian electronics. A number of developments bode well for enterprises ready and willing to snatch the opportunities to be gained from staying abreast of technology. Across the entire spectrum, technical advances are continuing apace.
