Indeed, I myself worked for one such niche high tech machinery German company. The problem is, due to the thin margins in these hardware gigs, the salaries are piss poor compared to the skills needed (M.Sc. and up) as even making iOS Apps paid better. Only the execs and the couple of grey beards who were with the company since its inception were well paid, everyone else not so much.
That's the reason youngsters aren't gravitating towards these gigs anymore and prefer to be web devs instead. The margins are higher and the entry bar lower.
I'm not saying they'll go bust tomorrow, not at all, I'm just saying they don't have an easy future ahead, due to low margins and unattractive career paths for youngsters, especially once their patents expire and China will be able to make the same stuff at half price. That's why the UK's decision to focus on services/consulting is a better long term bet IMHO.
China probably has more people at every level of education than Germany, they're just more sparsely distributed. So the one person with really in-depth manufacturing knowledge spends their time supervising a bunch of greenhorns who barely know how to operate the machines, making lots of cheap crap. But they're learning something new every day and may eventually become skilled enough to cost-effectively manufacture high-quality goods instead. Of course at that point they won't be happy with rock-bottom wages anymore, so it's not clear that prices will drop much.
That's the reason youngsters aren't gravitating towards these gigs anymore and prefer to be web devs instead. The margins are higher and the entry bar lower.
I'm not saying they'll go bust tomorrow, not at all, I'm just saying they don't have an easy future ahead, due to low margins and unattractive career paths for youngsters, especially once their patents expire and China will be able to make the same stuff at half price. That's why the UK's decision to focus on services/consulting is a better long term bet IMHO.