ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the special characteristics of the British electronics industry and its potential, brief assessments of recent developments in Central Scotland and the M4 corridor and a more extended analysis of electronics firms in South Wales. It seeks to provides some more theoretical issues which have important policy implications. The position of the indigenous consumer electronics industry deteriorated rapidly during the 1970s largely because of the superior product, process and marketing performance of Japanese companies. The indigenous electronics components industry has fared better than that of consumer electronics but, while output has increased rapidly since 1970, so too has the trade deficit – especially in key components such as integrated circuits – although this is stabilizing as overseas exporters set up production facilities in the UK. The electronics industry in South Wales has had to adjust to working in Britain's nearest approximation to a homogenous working-class region.
