Abstract :
Those who use electronics to solve problems for customers must exercise science, engineering, art, and business sense, and work with four generations of electronics based on vacuum tubes, discrete semiconductor devices, integrated circuits, and integrated electronic components, respectively. This paper includes forecasts of the growing applications and economic impact of integrated electronics. The concept of Active Element Groups (AEGs) is used to analyze the growth of the market from 1963 to 1973 and to emphasize the increasing integration of electronics. Despite dramatic trends now emerging in product mix and technology, the electronics industry will not be radically changed in structure. Bigger organizations are likely to get still bigger and stronger; smaller organizations are likely to consolidate; integrated electronics will make electronics pervasive. Integrated electronics makes the inward-looking science, engineering, and art of electronics more usable and allows the outward-looking practitioners who use electronics to solve problems for customers to move up their skills and concentrate on more effective and more sophisticated solutions-to those problems. It does not decrease their ability to serve their customers. It does require that they upgrade and change the emphasis of that ability to serve their customers more effectively.
