PCB News - Analysis of FPC business development in the field of smart phone and automobile

According to the survey data, the global FPC market size is over 10 Billion Dollars, and the proportion of PCB output value gradually increases to about 20%, and the domestic FPC market accounts for about half of the global market.Mobile phones, tablets and computers are the most important application areas of FPC, accounting for more than 60% of the total.
Market size and forecast of FPC over 10 Billion USD in 2007-2021.

Smartphone:
In smartphones, FPC is widely used for the connection between parts and motherboards, such as display module, fingerprint module, camera module, antenna, vibrator and so on. With the continuous penetration of fingerprint identification, the upgrade of camera to dual-shot and triple-shot, and the application of OLED, the use of FPC will continue to increase.
With the gradual popularization of dual-camera and triple-camera camera modules, the future growth space is still large, which is expected to reach about 45% in 2019. Huawei mobile phone is a firm mover of dual-camera, with dual-camera shipments accounting for more than 50% in 2017, followed by vivo and apple.According to the survey data, the sales volume of CMOS image sensor reached 11.5 billion us dollars (+9%) in 2017. From 2016 to 2021, the compound annual growth rate of CMOS image sensor market size was around 8.7%.
Penetration of major mobile phone brands.

Meanwhile, with the release of foldable phones by huawei and samsung, foldable phones will increase the demand for flexible AMOLED in the future.According to the survey data, the shipments of flexible AMOLED are expected to reach 180 million in 2018, which is three times more than the 46.5 million in 2015, and 336 million in 2020, accounting for more than 50% of the AMOLED shipments.In the field of smart phones, flexible On-CellAMOLED shipments reached 96.3 million in 2017, up 154% year On year, accounting for 6.3%.The iPhone X USES GF2OLED panels, and combined on-cell +GF2 AMOLED shipments will account for 9.9% in 2017 and about 30% in 2022.
At present, the usage of FPC in the mainstream smartphone ranges from 10 to 15 tablets, and the usage of iPhone X even exceeds 20 tablets.Combined with the above analysis, the usage of FPC will gradually increase in the future with product upgrading.Apple and samsung seldom purchase FPC products from domestic suppliers, while "HOV" has been open to domestic suppliers, so there is a large space for import substitution in the future.Apple's FPC suppliers are mainly Japanese, Taiwanese and American suppliers, while samsung's are mainly Korean suppliers. Besides Japanese and Taiwanese manufacturers, "HOV" is also purchased from domestic suppliers.

Automobile industry
FPC also has huge space in the automotive field, which can be used in power battery, on-board display module, sensor, headlights and other scenarios.The electronic level of new energy vehicles is much higher than that of traditional fuel vehicles. The traditional wiring harness mode has many connection points and large weight, which is not in line with the development trend of lightweight new energy vehicles.FPC is an optimal choice to reduce process complexity, weight and cost.With the development of new energy vehicles, automotive FPC has broad prospects.According to the survey data, global sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 2.02 million in 2018, up 66 percent year-on-year.
Due to the need to attach electronic components to the flexible circuit board of SMT, the price of electronic components is much higher than that of bare chips, so the FPC gross profit rate of SMT is relatively low.GuangPo shares mainly sell naked films. In 2018, the gross profit margin of FPC business is more than 30%, which is much higher than that of HongXin electronics co., LTD., which mainly sells SMT.