 | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1937 |
| Headquarters | London, England, UK |
Key people |
|
| Revenue |  £2,982.3 million (2023) [1] |
| £383.0 million (2023) [1] | |
| £284.8 million (2023) [1] | |
Number of employees | 7,818 (2023) [1] |
| Website | www |
RS Group plc (formerly Electrocomponents plc) is a distributor of industrial and electrical products based in London, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
The company was founded by J.H. Waring and P.M. Sebestyen as Radiospares in a lock-up garage at Lanark Villas in Maida Vale in London in 1937. [2] It supplied radio repair shops with spare parts – replacement electronic components and mechanical components for radio receivers and transmitters. [2]
When television sets became popular, the company added television parts to their product list. As the company expanded it moved to Birchington Road in Kilburn. By the end of the Second World War, the company had evolved into a large national distribution company. In 1954, the founders of Radiospares expanded the company's focus from shops and home users to the industrial sector and began selling electronic components to manufacturers. [2]
The company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange as Electrocomponents in 1967. [2] It also operated from Fitzroy House in Epworth Street in Islington during the 1970s. [3]
It opened a distribution centre at Corby in Northamptonshire in 1984, introduced a CD-ROM catalogue and opened a distribution centre in Nuneaton in Warwickshire in 1995, launched its own E-commerce web site in 1998 and acquired Allied Electronics, a US-based distributor, in 1999. [2]
In 2010, its two main operating companies, RS Components and Allied Electronics, launched free-to-use PCB layout software, DesignSpark PCB. [4] Then in 2012, RS Components and Allied Electronics became two of the main manufacturers and distributors for the Raspberry Pi. [5] [6] [7] It acquired a UK-based provider of outsourcing services, IESA, in May 2018. [8]
In March 2022, Electrocomponents plc announced that it would change its name to RS Group plc in early May 2022. [9] Allied Electronics was brought under RS brand as RS Americas, Inc in 2023. [10]
RS Group plc is an omni-channel provider of products and services for designers, builders and maintainers of industrial equipment and operations, serving over 1 million customers in more than 80 countries. [11] The company distributes over 600,000 products, including electronic components, electrical, automation and control, and test and measurement equipment, and engineering tools and consumables, sourced from 2,500 suppliers. [11] The company trades under the brands:
The General Electric Company (GEC) was a major British industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications, and engineering.
ABB Ltd. is a Swedish–Swiss multinational corporation headquartered in Västerås, Sweden, and Zürich, Switzerland. It is traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange in Zürich, the Nasdaq Nordic exchange in Sweden and the OTC Markets Group's pink sheets in the United States. It was ranked 340th in the Fortune Global 500 list of 2020 and has been a global Fortune 500 company for 24 years.
National Instruments Corporation, doing business as NI, is an American multinational company with international operation. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it is a producer of automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software. Common applications include data acquisition, instrument control and machine vision. Since October 2023, NI operates as Emerson Electric's test and measurement business unit after getting acquired.
Omron Corporation, styled as OMRON, is a Japanese electronics company based in Kyoto, Japan. Omron was established by Kazuma Tateisi (立石一真) in 1933 and incorporated in 1948.
OrCAD Systems Corporation was a software company that made OrCAD, a proprietary software tool suite used primarily for electronic design automation (EDA). The software is used mainly by electronic design engineers and electronic technicians to create electronic schematics, and perform mixed-signal simulation and electronic prints for manufacturing printed circuit boards (PCBs). OrCAD was taken over by Cadence Design Systems in 1999 and was integrated with Cadence Allegro in 2005.
EDN is an electronics industry website and formerly a magazine owned by AspenCore Media, an Arrow Electronics company. The editor-in-chief is Majeed Ahmad. EDN was published monthly until, in April 2013, EDN announced that the print edition would cease publication after the June 2013 issue.
Premier Farnell Ltd is a distributor of products for electronic system design, maintenance and repair throughout Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, with operations in 36 countries and trading in over 100. In October 2016, the firm was purchased by Avnet in a deal valued at approximately £691 million.
RS Americas, Inc is a United States-based omni-channel provider of product and service solutions for designers, builders and maintainers of industrial equipment and operations. They are part of London-based RS Group, plc, an FTSE 100 global leader in the omnichannel distribution of products and services for industrial equipment and operations.
Arrow Electronics is an American Fortune 500 company headquartered in Centennial, Colorado. A global provider of electronic components and enterprise computing products, the company specializes in distribution and value-added services for original equipment manufacturers, value-added resellers, managed service providers, contract manufacturers and other commercial customers. The company was ranked No. 133 in the 2024 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. The company has also been recognized for 11 consecutive years at the top of its industry ranking on Fortune's “World’s Most Admired Companies” list.
TTI, Inc., is a distributor of electronic components that include capacitors, resistors, connectors, switches, relays, circuit protection, electromagnetics, discrete semiconductors, sensors, RF modules, and antennas.
Mouser Electronics, Inc., is a global distributor of semiconductors and electronic components. With over $4 billion in annual revenue, Mouser is ranked as the seventh largest electronic component distributor in the world. The company has 28 locations globally and more than 3,900 employees. Mouser is part of the Berkshire Hathaway family of companies.
Altium Limited is an American- Australian multinational software company that provides electronic design automation software to engineers who design printed circuit boards. Founded as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in Australia in 1985, the company has regional headquarters in the United States, Australia, China, Europe, and Japan. Its products are designed for use in a Microsoft Windows environment and used in industries such as automotive, aerospace, defence and telecommunications. Its flagship product, Altium Designer, is a software for unified electronics design.
Cadence Design Systems, Inc., is an American multinational technology and computational software company. Headquartered in San Jose, California, Cadence was formed in 1988 through the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD. Initially specialized in electronic design automation (EDA) software for the semiconductor industry, currently the company makes software and hardware for designing products such as integrated circuits, systems on chips (SoCs), printed circuit boards, and pharmaceutical drugs, also licensing intellectual property for the electronics, aerospace, defense and automotive industries, among others.
CPC is a British end-user and business-to-business distributor of electrical and related products. Since 1995 it has been a brand of Farnell, which itself was acquired by Avnet in 2016.
Phoenix Contact, headquartered in Blomberg, Ostwestfalen-Lippe, Germany, is a manufacturer of industrial automation, interconnection, and interface solutions. The company develops terminal blocks, relays, connectors, signal conditioners, power supplies, controllers & PLCs, I/O systems, Industrial Ethernet, controller system cabling, PCB terminal blocks & connectors, and surge suppression. In addition, Phoenix Contact manufactures products for use with Modbus, DeviceNet, EtherNet/IP, CANopen, PROFIBUS and PROFINET networks.
DesignSpark PCB is a free electronic design automation software package for printed circuit boards. Although there is no charge for the software, the user must register with DesignSpark.com to unlock the program and it displays advertisements which must be acknowledged before the user can begin working.
Raspberry Pi is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned toward the promotion of teaching basic computer science in schools. The original model became more popular than anticipated, selling outside its target market for diverse uses such as robotics, home and industrial automation, and by computer and electronic hobbyists, because of its low cost, modularity, open design, and its adoption of the HDMI and USB standards.
Diploma plc is a British business supplying specialised technical products and services based in London, England. It is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
In the early twenty-first century; foreign investment, government regulations and incentives promoted growth in the Indian electronics industry. The semiconductor industry, which is its most important and resource-intensive sector, profited from the rapid growth in domestic demand. Many industries, including telecommunications, information technology, automotive, engineering, medical electronics, electricity and solar photovoltaic, defense and aerospace, consumer electronics, and appliances, required semiconductors. However, as of 2015, progress was threatened by the talent gap in the Indian sector, since 65 to 70 percent of the market was dependent on imports.
discoverIE Group plc is an international designer and manufacturer of customised and niche electronic components for industrial use. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.