Abstract
In 2013 the microelectronic industry has posted record sales with a healthy growth of more than 7%. The key to this trend is the vision that microelectronics is an enabler for many solutions to the 21st century society challenges. These range from infrastructure, health, transport, energy, security, communications and knowledge transfer. Services with embedded modern technologies have enabled emerging economies to leapfrog traditional development steps in an ever increasing number of sectors. Also, 45% of the economic growth of the OECD economies since 1985 is due to increased productivities thanks in no small measure to the electronic technology.