Striving for excellence and service first, Altium Beijing branch is established

A printed circuit board is a printed board that forms point-to-point connections and printed components on a universal substrate according to a predetermined design. Its main function is to connect various electronic components to a predetermined circuit and play a role in relay transmission. The manufacturing quality of PCB not only directly affects the reliability of electronic products, but also affects the overall competitiveness of system products. Therefore, it is called the "mother of electronic system products." Over the past decade, the global PCB industry has continued to move and layout its value chain to China. PCB companies in Europe, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan have entered mainland China due to adjustments in their industrial structure and the cost advantages of Asia. At the same time, PCB manufacturers in Europe and the United States have continued to close factories due to cost pressures and transferred orders to China, further promoting the continued growth of PCB production capacity in mainland China.

On April 24, 2019, Altium, a global leader in intelligent system design automation, 3D PCB design solutions ( Altium  Designer®), ECAD design data management (Altium Vault®) and embedded software development (TASKING®), announced that its Beijing office has officially started operations. This is Altium's third office in China after its Shanghai headquarters and Shenzhen office established in January 2018. In the future, the Beijing office will mainly focus on providing technical support and services to customers.

Hu Biaofeng, Director of Altium North China, said: "The key factor for Altium's rapid global business growth is that we always pay attention to the target market and continue to invest. In addition, Altium always believes that maintaining close and in-depth communication with customers and paying close attention to customer needs are also the main conditions for our success. We face the challenges they face in their business together. In addition, we have hired many technical experts in each office in China to communicate in depth with customers and help them solve problems.

New product launched - on-time leasing

In order to better promote the development of the Chinese market and provide more complete services to Chinese customers, Altium has launched a product specifically for the Chinese market - Time-based License, which means "time-based rental" business model in Chinese.

According to Hu Biaofeng, on-time leasing is a product tailor-made by Altium for the Chinese market, which will deepen the connection and interaction between Altium and its customers. At the same time, after on-time leasing, there may be better advantages in terms of price, which will allow them to obtain lower market costs.

David Read, General Manager of Altium Greater China, said with great expectations: "The on-time leasing products have been launched globally for some time, but the specific business model will be adjusted due to the usage habits of Chinese customers. The purpose of launching this product is to do our best to help Chinese customers use these software more conveniently."

No need to worry about software compatibility

Altium's star product, Altium Designer, is almost universally known in the field of electronic product design. Almost all PCB engineers who are just starting out started with the company's products, from the earliest Tango, DOS version of Protel, classic Protel 99SE to the current Altium Designer. It can be said that almost all college students in China use Altium Designer to learn PCB design.

As the software version becomes higher and the functions become more complete, the outside world seems to be concerned about its compatibility. David gave a positive answer on this point, and he is very confident about compatibility. "We have done a lot of work to improve the compatibility of our software, and we have always attached great importance to the compatibility of software. In addition, we also pay special attention to customers using other popular software in the industry and maintain communication, so our compatibility is very good."

In addition, David is confident in his own products in terms of competition with other rivals. First of all, design itself is already a headache. When all designers are doing this work, Altium hopes that the software it develops is easy to learn and use, so as to save time and cost and allow designers to better focus on their work. In addition, in the past few years, because the market is changing, there has been a great demand for 3D design. For this reason, Altium's PCB design software has made very significant improvements in this regard.

Closely linked to education - Altium University Outreach Program

In addition to continuous improvement of software, Altium is also actively promoting the "China University Plan" in China. This project is an important part of the company's continued commitment to investment in technological innovation. David said frankly that Altium attaches great importance to cooperation in the field of universities, and sends specialized technical personnel to promote in schools. Altium has very strong support to help schools with willingness and needs to open specialized courses. It is reported that the project was jointly initiated by Altium and China's top engineering colleges and universities, aiming to provide opportunities for students from China's top engineering universities and related majors to fully experience the most advanced technologies and electronic product design concepts.

At the same time, Altium also works closely with many universities to open laboratories. The establishment of joint laboratories is to promote the popularization of industry-leading integrated electronic design concepts in the field of information science education through close cooperation between industry, academia and research, enhance the engineering design capabilities of students in information-related majors, and achieve optimal resource combination. Altium will also focus on how to enable students to better use and understand tools, and will strengthen activities including student competitions, technical seminars and teacher training in the future. David said: "The growth of any industry is inseparable from the cultivation of talents. We are also willing to work closely with Chinese universities to continue to cultivate more outstanding graduates in the industry by starting courses and laboratory cooperation across the country, so that they can achieve a seamless transition from school to society.

In the future, teachers will be able to help students learn software more thoroughly and systematically. Altium will provide a certification system for college teachers. By issuing certificates, it can be determined which teachers in different colleges have passed what kind of certification, so that teaching can be more targeted. In addition, Altium has designed a designer certification program for students, so that students can not only master Altium Designer and participate in the training provided by Altium, but also obtain certificates, which will be of great benefit to future job hunting. Altium's practices are gradually setting new standards for China's most advanced electronic product design training.

David talks about the prospects of PCB market

Regarding the future development trend of PCB technology, David said: "Due to technological advances, companies' requirements for products are gradually increasing, and more and more functions are to be concentrated in chips, which also leaves more room for design engineers to improve their products. This is a good thing for China. In the past, complex designs were contracted out to foreign countries, but now with the improvement of China's design level and overall level, more and more design tasks are taken over by China, so in this field, we still have a lot of room for development." As a software provider, Altium will also continue to pay attention to technology hotspots and keep up with design needs.

Importance of the Chinese market

According to David, Altium Designer has been used by 40,000 users, but this is far from enough for them. Altium's strategic goal is to reach 100,000 users by 2025. For China, the base of electronic engineers is growing, and Altium hopes to start from China and make more engineers become regular users. In addition, the concept of renewal is already very common worldwide.

For Chinese customers, Altium can provide continuous technical support within the scope of the renewal. In the future, they are also confident that they can do a better job in business to continuously increase the number of customers who use the renewal. Only when customers get more help and support on the software can they better solve the challenges they face in the design process.

Altium also does this, they constantly optimize their software to meet the needs one by one. We know that "how fast? how convenient? how to communicate with various departments" are the three major problems commonly encountered by designers, which are also the long-term troubles of designers' work. In response to these annoying problems, Altium has developed a plug-in that allows designers to make timely modifications while drawing a piece, and automates all procedures.

The awareness of genuine products has been deeply rooted in people's hearts

Nowadays, piracy is rampant. You can use a powerful tool without spending money. It is said that the encryption method of the software is destined to make each new version be cracked instantly, and the cracked serial number will appear on the Internet immediately. When it comes to copyright issues, Hu Biaofeng frankly said that the whole society attaches great importance to copyright issues, and the use of genuine software is becoming more and more popular. Moreover, the Altium copyright consultant team is a very important part of the business. From the customer's perspective, they actually pay great attention to the safety and reliability of the product, because the products used by designers to design are the lifeblood of the business, and the use of genuine and legally licensed software is crucial to the safety and reliability of their own business; customers are also very satisfied with the after-sales service, technical support and training provided by Altium, which can better help them do their work. However, for pirated software, especially in the design industry, these risks cannot be underestimated. Therefore, we still have to pay the fees obediently and respect other people's IP. Nothing good in the world is free.

Summarize

Nowadays, one technological wave after another continues to impact our cognition. The implementation of all these emerging technological waves, such as the Internet of Things, AI, and 5G, will bring transformation to the entire society. At the same time, a variety of electronic products will definitely be needed in all aspects. At the same time, the field of electronic design is also developing rapidly. There is a particular need for PCB design software like Altium that has high customer recognition, high stability, and wide recognition to serve such an industry.