In the circumstances this was a decent effort, especially with the cancellation of Mobile World Congress hanging over proceedings.

As it was over 900 exhibitors decided to attend. The test and measurement, software, boards and modules and interconnect sectors were particularly well represented. 

The ranks of the semiconductor manufacturers and component distributors were heavily depleted.

No Texas Instruments, Microchip Technology, Analog Devices, NXP, Arrow, Avnet, Digi-Key and Mouser took its toll. These are the blue-chip companies of embedded world so understandably their absence had a knock-on effect on the attendance.

When the exhibition doors closed, visitors numbered 13,000, which while well down on the previous year did offer some benefits. 

“The good news,” one exhibitor told Electronic Specifier, “is that many visitors arrived with a specific purpose or project, and with fewer visitors we had more time to talk to them, so some serious discussions took place.”

There was of course no getting away from the impact of the coronavirus crisis.