At 08.48 2005.09.01 +0800, you wrote:
>So you are now going directly to Chinese vendors. That is a much better
>option. I think the language barrier will still be there. However with 
>the higher education being more and more accessible (not really more 
>affordable) to the general public, there will be more and more Chinese
>who command good enough English to communicate. To pass a National 
>Band-4 College English test is a prerequisite to get a Bachelor's
>degree since 1993. Now lots of the students take TOEFL as well 
>(not really totally for going abroad) since quite some employers
>require this. Japanese/German are quite popular 2nd language as well.
>
>In my company (a Germany company) we do want to lower our PCB
>price down. However, we have not got an approved vendor in
>China so far. One thing is because of the stringent tolerance
>of our PCB tolerance. The major thing is the quantity
>(normally 5k-20k per year for each PCB). So far our approved
>vendors are in Singapore, Taiwan and India. Those Chinese vendors
>with higher quality standard do not want to accept our order. 
>Those want to accept our order are not able to fulfill our 
>requirement (ISO 9000 and quality audit). 
>
>We get delivery of PCB in about three weeks from approved vendors
>by paying express (if not it is 6 weeks). Creative Technology (MP3) 
>get their PCBs in three days by paying express. So quantity plays
>a big part.
>
>Actually there are many smaller Chinese vendors providing good
>enough PCBs (1-layer or 2-layer). They may not meet my company's
>requirement, they are certainly good enough for normal production
>run and prototyping.
>
>China is still importing a lot of high value PCBs like flex and
>rigid-flex board from outside. It is said that now higher end
>PCB vendors start to producing more and more flex boards now.
>A major listed PCB manufacturer (quite good in high end boards,
>one of the suppliers of our flex boards) in Singapore will close 
>down its factory in Singapore and move to in Jiangshu province 
>(near Shanghai and produce most of the Dell/HP/Acer/... notebooks
>among other things).
>
>Yahoo just invests big money into the Chinese based Alibaba 
>(http://www.alibaba.com) which is specialized in introducing 
>the Chinese vendors to the outside world. Yahoo has bought
>3721.com and yishou.com before. Now Google is into Chinese
>market as well with the competition from Baidu.com and Yahoo
>China. Ebay is also in China. Looks like another dotcom boom 
>(? bubble in Baidu's case) in China.

We will all speak Chinese in 50 years, and I'm not too unhappy
about it. Would you give us some lessons, just to prepare us? ;)


>
>Regards,
>Xiaofan
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: olin_piclist@embedinc.com [mailto:olin_piclist@embedinc.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 8:59 PM
>To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
>Subject: Re: [EE:] Low cost PCB Fab in the US
>
>Chen Xiao Fan wrote:
>> (I remember last year's discussion about Olin's EasyProg and he was 
>> using Chinese vendors through a middleman).
>
>That was last year.  Now I'm going directly to a different Chinese vendor.
>The outfit in Arizona (E-TekNet) that front ended their cousins and uncles
>back in China got uppitty with the price at the same time making stupid
>mistakes and not following clear written directions two production runs in a
>row.
>...
>We do some production on our own, and sometimes recommend or help set up
>production for our customers.  There is no way I'd put my reputation on the
>line by recommending or even mentioning E-TekNet to a customer now.
>-- 
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