Tea Time

Consultant/gadfly Charlie Barnhart today said his model suggests higher near-term risk for certain sectors of the EMS industry.

“It won’t be a catastrophic, ‘off the cliff’ event, but certain areas are substantially more at risk than others,” he wrote in his weekly blog, singling out military and aerospace for “significant demand dropoff this year.”

Contrast Charlie’s tea leaves with the longer-view held by iSuppli and Global Industry Analysts.

The former is forecasting revenues to rise 8.5% this year, to $347 billion, building on 2010’s ridiculous jump of 33.5%.

The latter asserts the market is much smaller, projecting it to reach $231.4 billion by 2015. That’s roughly $30 billion less than what iSuppli says the market for outsourced electronics was in 2009.

Without insight into iSuppli’s and GIA’s respective methodologies, it’s impossible to know why such a large discrepancy exists. This I will say, however: If I had to bet on which model is right, I’d take Charlie’s.