The recent Embedded World Exhibition offered distributors the opportunity to display their widening range of offerings for a software-dominated electronics world.
Name the electronics industry event or exhibition, and component distributors are certain to be present in full force, even at events dominated by software engineers rather than their more hardware-focused colleagues working on the latest systems designs and applications. The recent Embedded World Exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany, was not any different. Distributors from across the globes were noticeably present, their booths—in many cases—as prominent as the ones they occupied months earlier in Munich at the biennial Electronica Show. The world of software and hardware have merged, fusing in ways that many in the industry are still trying to understand. The software engineer of the future must understand hardware, and vice versa, according to industry experts who say it’s difficult determining the lines separating the two nowadays. Distributors are positioning themselves as the core sector within the supply chain that has the capabilities to oversee the harmonization of the two, according to industry executives.
The top distributors were all present at Embedded World. So were many of the smaller companies operating in niche markets and at regional levels all over the world. The easily recognizable names such as Arrow Electronics, Avnet, Digi-Key, Future Electronics, Mouser, Rochester stood out. Look closely, though, and the rank of distributors appeared swollen with the presence of smaller companies operating in various parts of the European Union, US, China, Taiwan, and the UK. That has been the pattern for many years now. Companies based in the Nordic region were there, alongside German, Swedish, Italian and French competitors. Something was different this time around, though. Artificial intelligence (AI) was the ubiquitous application everyone wanted to talk about. This was clear in all the halls and in press statements or product announcements issued by chipmakers, software developers and third-party services vendors. Mouser Electronics in a statement said the w exhibition offered it the opportunity to demonstrate its support of the electronics community as they “come together to explore the latest industry trends and discover a wide range of innovative technologies, processes, and future products.”
Distributors rolled out a raft of announcements indicating they are primed for the proliferation of AI. These include offerings related to systems, design, software, development information and reference tools required by AI hardware and embedded application engineers. The preannouncements from some of the distributors demonstrated how the market is now being driven primarily by AI and the components and software that have turned it into a multi-billion-dollar segment worldwide. German distributor and systems components supplier Rutronik Elektronische Bauelemente GmbH showed up with a broad set of offerings to support AI developers, leveraging its investment last year in Collective Mind GmbH, a provider of machine vision applications in the AI environment. During the show, Rutronik offered AI solutions supporting semiconductor suppliers and systems vendors, including Adlink, Asus, Intel and Kontron, according to Stephan Menze, head of global innovation management at the company. “We will be focusing on AI at embedded world, including a demo on the intelligent control of applications by starting or stopping or changing the direction of a motor with the help of AI and neural networks for radar-supported gesture control or keyword recognition,” Menze said.
Distribution and Edge AI
The component distribution sector has had slim pickings so far in the AI market, however, due to the dominance of the segment by large developers of accelerators and systems builders such as Nvidia Corp., Advanced Micro Devices and Intel. These companies offer not just GPUs and CPUs, but also complete systems incorporating powerful software applications. They typically oversee the supply chain for these themselves or through contract manufacturers which directly manage component sourcing and the approved vendors’ list, a natural bastion of distributors. This time, though, distributors have not played as prominent a role in large language model-focused AI data centers although they continue to explore opportunities to participate in the segment. The emergence of Edge AI, though, has opened another area of opportunity for distributors and their suppliers, observers noted.
Since the data processing for Edge AI takes place locally on the device – without moving to the Cloud – the opportunities are wider, according to analysts. Industry sources said they see Edge AI impacting billions of devices in markets as diverse as healthcare, industrial, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation and elsewhere. This will drive the market’s growth at a double-digit pace through the next decade, said Grandview Research, a market researcher. “The global edge AI market size was estimated at $20.78 billion in 2024 and is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 21.7% from 2025 to 2030,” Grandview Research said, in a report. “The market is experiencing significant growth, driven by the increasing demand for real-time data processing and analysis at the network’s edge.”
With the Edge AI market forecast to more than double over the next five years, distributors are lining up support services that range from components to software applications and reference designs. Many of these activities are taking place in partnership with semiconductor suppliers and software developers. Future Electronics said at the Embedded World show that it had dozens of demonstrations on “the full spectrum of embedded solutions, from components and modules to complete systems, hardware, software, and services.” These offerings include “tailored solutions” catering to Edge AI device designs. The same applies to DigiKey as well as Avnet Silica and EBV Elektronik, two European subsidiaries of Avnet. “We’re witnessing a surge in design activity throughout Europe and are ready to fuel that growth with innovative new products, frictionless digital tools and design resources,” said Mike Slater, vice president, global business development at DigiKey, in a statement. Avnet Silica’s product demonstrations at the Embedded World show centered around generative AI. The company displayed its “iconic phone box,” which is “hosted entirely offline … illustrates the incredible speed, security, and efficiency of edge-based generative AI, demonstrating how local processing ensures privacy and low latency while eliminating the need for cloud connectivity.”
