Hearst going after Embedded Market... in Europe

Got a note from Bill Barron about a new venture between Electronikpraxis and Hearst Business Media.  The two publishing companies are joining forces on Embedded Designer, an online publication to be unveiled at Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany in March.  This will be the German language equivalent of the US site.  

The embedded technology industry is one of the few that is drawing interest of B2B publications, United Business Media, included.  UBM's Embedded Systems Conference (driven to success by Paul Miller) has become a bicoastal phenomenon with continue year-to-year growth when other conferences are struggling to break even.  And Embedded World continues to draw a great deal of interest worldwide.

You can say the reason for this interest is because embedded is such a vibrant industry.  But publishing companies and conference organizers are not in it for altruistic reasons.  The industry is still investing marketing money in the effort, maybe even more than in recent years. So that's where the press is going.

Is this a turn around in the economy or the tech industry?  I don't really think so.  I've been watching the embedded industry for several years now and while it was affected by the downturn, it really never experienced the kind of disaster most tech industries suffered.  Part of it might be because it draws from several hundred niches, from software and semiconductors, all the way to services and connectors.  But it also might be because it has real marketers running marketing, leaving the engineers to do what they do best--build innovative technology.

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