With the general trend of industry moving eastward, the mainland region is outshining others. The focus of PCB industry continues to shift to the Asian region, while the capacity of the Asian region further shifts to the mainland, forming a new industrial pattern. With the continuous production capacity transfer, Chinese Mainland has become the region with the highest PCB production capacity in the world. According to prismark's estimation, China's PCB output value will reach US $28.972 billion in 2017, accounting for more than 50% of the global total output value.
Applications such as data center increase HDI demand, and FPC has a broad space in the future. The data center is developing towards the characteristics of high speed, large capacity, cloud computing and high performance. The construction demand surges, and the demand for servers will also increase the overall demand for HDI. The popularity of mobile electronic products such as smart phones will also drive the demand for FPC boards. Under the trend of intelligent and thin mobile electronic products, FPC has the advantages of light weight, thin thickness and bending resistance, which will be conducive to its wide application. FPC has an increasing demand in the display module, touch module, fingerprint identification module, side key, power key and other sectors of smart phones.
Under the "price rise of raw materials + environmental protection supervision", the concentration is increased, and leading manufacturers welcome the opportunity. The rising prices of copper foil, epoxy resin, ink and other raw materials in the upper reaches of the industry transmit cost pressure to PCB manufacturers. At the same time, the central government vigorously carries out environmental protection supervision, implements environmental protection policies, combats small manufacturers with chaos, and exerts cost pressure. Under the background of rising raw material prices and stricter environmental supervision, the PCB industry reshuffle has brought about an increase in concentration. Small manufacturers have weak bargaining power in the downstream and are difficult to digest the price increase in the upstream. Small and medium-sized PCB enterprises will withdraw due to the continuous narrowing of profit space. In this round of PCB industry reshuffle, leading companies have technical and financial advantages, and are expected to achieve scale expansion through capacity expansion, mergers and acquisitions, product upgrading, etc. with their efficient production processes and excellent cost control, they will directly benefit from the improvement of industry concentration. The industry is expected to return to rationality and the industrial chain will continue to develop healthily.
New applications promote the growth of the industry, and the 5g era is approaching. 5g new communication base stations have a large demand for high-frequency circuit boards: compared with the number of millions of base stations in the 4G era, the scale of base stations in the 5g era is expected to exceed tens of millions. Compared with traditional products, high-frequency high-speed boards meeting 5g requirements have wider technical barriers and higher gross profit margin.
The trend of automotive electronization has driven the rapid growth of Automotive PCB. With the deepening of automotive electronization, the demand area of Automotive PCB will gradually increase. Compared with traditional vehicles, new energy vehicles have higher requirements for the degree of electronization. The cost of electronic devices accounts for about 25% in traditional luxury cars and 45% ~ 65% in new energy vehicles. BMS will become a new growth point of Automotive PCB, and the high-frequency PCB carried by millimeter wave radar puts forward a lot of rigid requirements.
