Strategic Intelligence: Component Makers Sector Scorecard Q1 2025 Update

Strategic Intelligence: Component Makers Sector Scorecard Q1 2025 Update

Summary

Although there is a 90-day pause on the Trump administration’s tariffs, the relief may only be temporary, and component makers face significant challenges to their operations. Tariffs on Chinese-made electronic components (such as printed circuit boards (PCBs), semiconductors, capacitors, and resistors) are expected to lead to higher prices for manufacturers and customers. Keyboardio, which makes unique keyboards tailored to enthusiasts, has said it will cease taking orders for US customers entirely. The supplier does not know how much US customers would be expected to pay per purchase, nor which carrier would even be available to ship products to them. Other component makers face similar uncertainty.

As if the impact of tariffs were not enough, the major markets for component makers are flat. The manufacturing industry is showing weak annualized growth, while smartphone sales will be hit by worries over price increases, notably because of tariffs. The difficult geopolitical picture on defense, particularly in Europe, does offer some opportunities for component makers, with NATO countries collectively under pressure to raise their defense spending to 2% of GDP. However,while defense does indeed offer promise, it is likely to be a long-term play for component makers, rather than a short-term opportunity.

Scope

• This sector scorecard provides a top-down, comprehensive outlook for the key players in the component makers sector over the next two years, based on the key themes set to transform their industry landscape.

• Companies that invest in the right themes become success stories. Those that miss the important themes in their industry end up as failures.
• GlobalData’s thematic research ecosystem is a single, integrated global research platform that provides an easy-to-use framework for tracking all themes across all companies in all sectors. It has a proven track record of identifying the important themes early, enabling companies to make the right investments ahead of the competition, and secure that all-important competitive advantage.
• At GlobalData, we have developed a unique thematic methodology for ranking all major companies in all major sectors based on their relative strength in the big themes that are impacting their industries.
• Our thematic engine tags over 180 million data items across six alternative data sets—patents, jobs, deals, filings, social media, and news—to themes. The vast datasets within our thematic engine help our analysts to produce sector scorecards that identify the companies best placed to succeed in a future filled with multiple disruptive threats.