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Component distribution in South Africa - the Arrow Altech experience

4 April 2007 News

In today’s predominantly price-driven component distribution industry, it has become essential for distribution companies to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Arrow Altech Distribution (AAD), one of the leading professional distributors in the South African market, prides itself on not only offering the benefits of being a one-stop solution provider in terms of breadth of product offering, but also in being able to offer its customer base a depth of support across its product offering. This translates into customers receiving the benefit of being able to purchase a wide variety of products from a single broadline distributor - while receiving the comprehensive technical support normally offered by a niche product distributor.

AAD is also geared to offer comprehensive system solutions, which reduces the overall product cost by providing customers access to a team of highly competent engineers responsible for the following areas:

* Wireless: AAD represents Wavecom, the world's largest manufacturer of M2M GSM/GPRS/EDGE wireless modules. The Wavecom OpenAT architecture allows customers to write their own code onto the module and also to use add-on software modules for Bluetooth and GPS, which reduces the cost of the end product. In addition, AAD represents Navman and LeadTech GPS modules. The wireless division is supported by both a product manager and a software application support engineer - fully trained on Wavecom's OpenAT systems.

* Semiconductor: AAD has a team of several engineers supporting some of the biggest semiconductor suppliers in the world including, Atmel, Cypress, Freescale, Intel, Microchip, National, NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductor), ON Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Texas Instruments RFiD and Vishay. AAD has a strong product offering through microcontrollers, power, discretes, memory, RF and mixed-signal devices.

* Frequency control products: AAD is able to offer a broad variety of quality crystals, oscillators and resonators to suit all applications from a dedicated sales desk.

* Battery solutions: Due to the growing demand for portable equipment, AAD's newest division caters for market needs by supplying standard and custom batteries in Ni-MH, NiCD, Li-Ion, Li-Primary and Li-Polymer chemistries - this from a complete range of carefully-selected top quality suppliers such as GP.

* Antenna's, connectors, switches and relays: AAD has an all-inclusive portfolio of electromechanical suppliers that cater for every requirement - from the cheapest pin header, to military spec connectors. AAD stocks an extensive array of active GSM and GPS antennas. With AAD's experienced Field Applications Engineer, it is able to advise customers through the often tricky process of selecting the correct electromechanical product from suppliers including among others, Amphenol, Molex, Samtec and Tyco.

* Passive components: AAD carries a wide variety of standard commodity passive components, as well as high-end protection devices, capacitors, resistors and power inductors from suppliers such as Littelfuse, Raychem, Kemet and Yageo.

The engineering department aside, AAD is supported by a team of skilled, customer-centric sales people who endeavour to ensure that high service levels and complete support to their customers is maintained at all times.

For more information contact Simon Churches, Arrow Altech Distribution, +27 (0)11 923 9600, [email protected]



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