While a lot of high-volume electronics manufacturing has left North America, Mexico's EMS business is growing.

"Mexico lost a lot of business to lower-cost Asian electronics manufacturing services (EMS) sites," says Robert Freid, president of Contract Manufacturing Consultants in Bellevue, Wash. "Most of that business will never come back." But Mexico seems to be "backfilling with higher-mix, midvolume business, products that involve electromechanical assembly," says Freid.

He says Mexico is convenient for many OEMs who are selling into the U.S. "Companies look at communications convenience when deciding where to locate manufacturing." To have EMS plants within a time zone or two is preferred vs. communicating with Asia, which means you're on the phone at five or six in the morning." says Freid.

Eric Miscoll, chief operating officer for Technology Forecasters, says Mexico is handling more automotive and white goods OEM business. "Mexico is ramping up as the low-cost location within the Americas," he says.

While a lot of high-volume, low-mix production moved to Asia over the last years, Asia is increasingly building more complex, lower volume assemblies, says Freid.

"Asia used to be interested in only higher volume manufacturing, but that has changed a lot. I visited EMS sites in Asia that have high-volume production, but also low- and medium-volume and higher mix products. The volume was 200-300 assemblies per customer. That is an important part of the growth in Asia."

While Asia will attract more manufacturing generally, EMS providers will not totally abandon North America and Europe. Miscoll says that OEMs and EMS providers will spread out manufacturing geographically and have certain manufacturing close to where the products are shipped.

Often the total landed cost of building a product in North America or Europe for products that will be sold in those regions is less or at least competitive with products built in China or other Asian countries.

North American EMS sites will continue to be used for prototype builds and for final configuration of products before they are shipped to the end customer.

India is another emerging area for the EMS industry. However, much of what will be produced in India will be for domestic consumption.