China
@imveurope
www.imveurope.com
Business development inChina
Dr Shaoxian Zhang, founder of V&A Photonics, discusses the challenges associated with entering the Chinese market
F
or most SMEs in the photonics industry, China is an interesting – but challenging – market. China is surpassing the United
States to become the largest single market in the world, which not only means huge demand for goods and services, but also a need for innovation in order to cope with a rapidly evolving society and economy. Factory labour costs have doubled in the last 10 years and quality requirements have become more stringent. Tis combination has generated a good market for photonics- enabled automation applications, such as laser machining and imaging inspection. Photonics is an enabling technology, which
relies on a multi-disciplinary approach. Te nature of this business sector is diverse and small in volume – except for a number of consumer market segments – and it is therefore not easy for market development everywhere in the world. It is challenging for European firms to build business in China, given the additional difficulties, such as the language barrier, defining the requirements of an application, contract implementation and IP protection. V&A Photonics has been
International Integrated Photonics Forum 2017, organised by V&A Photonics and SMITAC in Shanghai
focusing on international photonics business development in China since 2010 through offices in Eindhoven, Te Netherlands, and Wuxi, in the Shanghai region of China. We cooperate with technical companies like LioniX International and research institutes such as TNO to serve Chinese companies, ranging
The incubation candidates … should be ready for deployment in a remote market with limited customisation and local support
from system integrators like Huawei, to material suppliers like Chendu Special Glass. While we work with a number of technical companies from the United States, Canada and South Korea, our partners are mainly in Europe. In general, European firms are more process and solutions-oriented than Chinese firms, which are more product-oriented. Because we deal with a
lot of requests in China for which there are no off-the- shelf products, naturally we work with European
firms that can develop a suitable solution from concept. We specialise in telecoms/data, aerospace,
optics materials, and also have close local partners that have expertise in healthcare,
26 Imaging and Machine Vision Europe • Yearbook 2018/2019
environmental sensing, the internet of things (IoT) and industrial automation. Our employees are experts in these sectors and are adept at scouting and visiting potential customers in China, and then defining the project requirements from scratch. Tis is a very necessary and key competence; without it we would be building a tower on sand. Furthermore, we have recently opened our own 6,000m2 facility in China, equipped with a cleanroom, which is available for our partners to test their solutions and for pilot production. Over the years, we have developed a
systematic way of conducting photonics business incubation in China for international technical partners. We have two approaches: one is market demand in China, the other is technology pull. For the former, we start with evaluating the demands, and investigate challenging issues that oſten cannot be addressed using off-the-shelf solutions currently in China.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
