Electronics.ca Releases Advanced Printed Circuit Board Industry Report

Electronics.ca Publications, an electronics industry market research and knowledge network, announces the availability of a new report entitled "Advanced Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Industry Report, 2007-2008".

In this new report, the advanced PCB (printed circuit boards) mainly refers to non-traditional PCBs, including mobile phone and photoelectric boards; only hard board is set as the research object without involving soft board. According to the report, 40 percent of the world's PCB is produced in the uppermost manufacturing bases - China and Taiwan.

Japan majors in high-end products like IC boards and flexible boards, and that of Korea in IC boards, memory module and mobile phone boards. In recent years, Taiwan has made rapid progress in IC boards; Nanya has exceeded Ibiden, ranking first globally, and the overall production value of IC boards has surpassed South Korea. Taiwan also acts as the world's another largest mobile phone board producing area, sharing over 60 percent of the global market. In China, there are 1200 plus PCB enterprises, most of which are engaged in single-sided PCB and multilayer PCB with low technology content as well as downstream products usually including computer motherboard and inferior consumable electronics, the report indicated.

Furthermore, only a few of PCB enterprises in military and aerospace fields survive in North America. In Europe, the PCB industry has been gradually shrinking due to the strict demand in environmental protection and weak competitive ability caused by workers' unwillingness towards overtime work; hence in the future, Europe-based PCB enterprises will all but disappear, or be transferred to China, the report predicted.

As for the traditional PCB field, owing to lower threshold and furious competition, manufacturers are successively seeking new profit points, which can be concluded into the following three directions:

The first is IC boards. As a capital intensive investment, IC boards cover the semiconductor packaging and PCB industries, requiring manufacturers to own technologies in the two fields. So IC boards has the highest threshold, yet with the largest profit. All of the top PCB manufacturers show great interest in IC boards, such as the world largest PCB enterprise - Ibiden, the world second largest PCB enterprise - Shinko Electric, Taiwan-based largest PCB enterprise - Nanya PCB and Taiwan's second largest PCB enterprise - World Wiser Electronics.

The second is special fields, including mobile phone boards, photoelectric boards, laptop computer PCBs and memory modules. According to the report, Taiwan is the world largest supplying region in mobile phone boards, and over 65 percent of the world's mobile phone boards come from Taiwan.

Due to the costliness of horizontal electroplating equipment and superior demand on interlayer registration accuracy and electroplating level up degree, the entry threshold is comparatively high despite having 4-6 layer boards in the photoelectric field. Taiwan-based Tripod Electronic and Wus Printed Circuit Co Ltd are the two giants in this field, while Dynamic Electronics and Taiwan PCB TechVest Co Ltd are regarded as the rising stars; besides, Yang An Electronics and Gold Circuit Electronics have also made progress, and the breakthrough in vertical electroplating technology made by Yang An Electronics is worth mentioning. In the laptop computer PCB area, over 60 percent of the market share goes to HannStar Board Corp and Gold Circuit Electronics, Wah Toon, Tripod Electronic, Vertex Precision Electronics and Cadac Electronic also share certain markets, especially Wah Toon which is trying to gain more market margin in this field.

As for memory modules, the electromotive and shaping equipments needed by memory PCB all have exclusive devices, unable to be widely used manufacturing other PCBs, so this area requires special investment. Meanwhile, due to the low profit margin of memory modules, the scale should be large enough so as to make a gain. Tripod Electronic, SIMMTECH, Dade Motor, South Korea Circuit and Copam Electronics predominate in this field. South Korea, is acting as not only the memory base but also the memory module PCB base. However, Taiwan-based Tripod Electronic has unique features as well, ranking second globally with Samsung and Qimonda as its clients.

The third direction is to develop towards EMS manufacturers. The crucial strategy for PCB manufacturers and EMS manufacturers is cost control. These manufacturers usually manufacture LCD-TV, DVD, and PDP-TV circuit boards in the past, and afterwards began to assemble these products, such as Ya Hsin. Additionally, Meiko Electronics also has similar intention, and Viasystems Group, the largest PCB manufacturer in North America, also orienting itself at EMS manufacturers.

Details of the new report can be found on Electronics.ca Publications' web site: http://www.electronics.ca/reports/electronics_manufacturing/pcbs.html

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