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30 The PCB Magazine • July 2014 Summary and Outlook New product developments require new ways to improve quality, miniaturisation, and efficiency, including energy efficiency, and in many cases improved thermal management. Device embedding technology in PCBs has a large potential to meet these future require- ments. However, PCB fabricators have to learn how to absorb and master the technology chal- lenges not only of fabrication, but also of as- sembly of device testing, and end use applica- tion. In addition, PCB fabricators have to under- stand that the actual quantities of manufactured boards will determine the market opportunity for the printed circuit board technology. When quantities are large, as in the mobile phone or computer tablet business, the chip and the chip packaging industry will sooner or later work out a solution that takes this market segment away from the PCB technology (Figure 14). Based on historical information from the hybrid circuits industry in the '80s and from organic embedded device technology (e.g., SIMOV) in the '90s, the PCB industry has to encourage electronic designers to focus on many new developments in technology. This will stimulate demand in the area of small to medium PCB quantities, and, based on the cost structure of the PCB fabrication process, the production of small batch siz- es should offer a good return for the PCB fabricators. For the semiconductor indus- try the start-up fixed costs are too high to focus on a small number of products, and therefore these market segments are of little interest to the chip and the chip packaging industry. In addition, many new designs re- quire good engineering at the PCB fabricator and a good communication between the de- velopment engineers. Both must exist to en- sure success. PCB Figure 13: Small series of PcBs using an in-kind PcB technology are manufactured locally while large series are often sourced globally [10] . DEvICE EMBEDDING IN PCBS: EvOLUTION OR REvOLUTION? continues