PCB News - How to change the changes in the PCB circuit board industry?

What has China done to the new darling of the market?

In recent years, the rapid growth of the consumer electronics market led by mobile electronic devices such as smart phones and tablet computers has become more and more obvious. Therefore, the traditional circuit board can no longer meet the requirements of the product. For this reason, manufacturers have begun to research new technologies to replace PCBs. FPC is one of the most popular technologies in electronic equipment.

In addition, the rapid rise of wearable smart devices, drones and other emerging consumer electronics markets has also brought new growth space for FPC products. At the same time, the display and touch trends of various electronic products also enable FPCs to enter a broader application space market demand through small and medium-sized LCD screens and touch screens.

The latest report shows that the future flexible electronic technology will drive a $100 billion market and become a pillar industry for the leap-forward development of China's electronics industry.

The thin and flexible FPC has become a major trend in the PCB industry.

Advantages and classification.

PCB (Printed Circuit Board) is considered the mother of electronic system products. FPC (flex circuit board) is a kind of PCB, also called soft board.

FPC has the advantages of high wiring density, light weight, and thin bending flexibility. It can withstand millions of dynamic bends without damaging the wires, and carry out any movement and expansion according to the requirements of the space layout to achieve three-dimensional assembly and connection with the wires. Other types of circuit boards have unparalleled advantages.

Technical characteristics of FPC products.

According to the type of substrate film, FPC can be divided into PIPET and PEN. PI-coated FPC is the most common type of soft board. It can be further subdivided into single-sided PI cover film FPC, double-sided PI cover film FPC, multilayer PI cover film FPC and rigid grabbing film FPC.

PI cover film FPC classification.

The popularity of smart terminals has led to the explosion of the FPC industry.

Circuit boards are generally divided into two categories: rigid circuit boards, flexible circuit boards, rigid circuit boards, refrigerators and other household appliances. Flexible circuit boards are an indispensable part of consumer electronic products such as smart phones. They have the characteristics of light weight, thin thickness, and good flexibility.

FPC soft boards were initially not used until Apple was widely used in consumer electronics products. Apple firmly supports the FPC solution. It uses as many as 14 to 16 FPCs on the iPhone, of which the multi-layer difficulty is 70%. The FPC area of the whole machine is about 120cm2; the FPC consumption of products such as iPad, AppleWatch is also more than 10 yuan.

Under Apple's demonstration effect, mobile phone factories such as Samsung HOV quickly followed up the use of FPC. The number of FPCs in Samsung mobile phones is about 12-13 Korean FPC manufacturers, such as InterflexSEMCO.

On the other hand, in the field of smart phones, wireless charging has become a major trend in the industry to cut off the complex charging lines. In wireless charging, the FPC solution has gradually become a more popular choice of three-in-one technology, such as FPCNFCMST (Magnetic Radiation Simulation).

Samsung S7 uses FPCNFCMST three-in-one solution.

According to the research information of the industry chain, iPhone8 is expected to use Samsung's technology path, namely the FPCNFCMST integration plan. Under the demonstration of iPhone8, domestic HOV will surely follow up the comprehensive development of wireless charging technology. It is estimated that by 2019, only wireless charging modules from Apple, Samsung, and HOV can bring nearly US$4 billion in FPC growth.

The PCB industry is gradually shifting to mainland China.

Since the 21st century, due to the labor and transportation costs of the industrial chain, China's PCB capacity has gradually shifted to Asia. In 2006, it became the largest PCB capacity base in the world.

From 2015 to 2020, the PCB capacity of major countries around the world has changed.

In 2014/2020, China's PCB accounted for the proportion of global output value.

The relatively high-end FPC capacity transfer in PCB is also in progress. The current FPC output value as a proportion of global output value has increased from 6.74% in 2005 to 47.97% in 2015. It is expected that the ratio will remain nearly half in the future.

In 2008/2015, China's FPC output value accounted for the global proportion.

In 2021, the revenue of local FPC manufacturers accounted for the global revenue forecast.

Local companies are accelerating their rise.

FPC companies in mainland China have also entered a period of accelerated development: the newly-built Taishan Industrial Park of Jingchengda was officially put into production in September 2012, with a monthly production capacity of 120,000 m2. Jinwang raised US$740 million for the industrialization project of high-density multilayer flexible and metal-based circuit boards, and vigorously expanded production after Dongshan Precision acquired MFLEX. It is the only international first-line FPC factory that still has a large-scale production capacity.

Some domestic FPC manufacturers have expanded their production plans.

Chinese companies only account for 10% of the global market.

Although flexible circuit boards have become a hot spot in the domestic capital market in recent years. In March last year, Electronics was listed on the new third board and entered the strategic innovation layer in September of the same year; Xiamen Red Heart Electronics was listed on the Growth Enterprise Market, which was recently approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and Jiangxi Helitai recently announced. It is recommended to purchase Lampe Technology to obtain the world's leading FPC material technology.

However, some experts pointed out that some of the core raw materials of FPC products, such as copper plate conductive film shielding film, are still in the hands of foreign companies. Domestic FPC domestic manufacturers have a weak ability to participate in international market competition, and their overall market share is mainly concentrated in the domestic market.

European, American and Japanese companies entered the FPC industry 10 to 20 years earlier than domestic manufacturers. At present, the global flexible circuit board market has an annual demand of more than 10 billion US dollars, and the global market share of domestic companies is only about 10%.

Domestic enterprises have accelerated the improvement of their technological level.

Although there is a clear gap between domestic FPC companies and foreign manufacturers, industry insiders believe that in recent years, domestic mobile phone brands such as Huawei have developed rapidly. Domestic FPC manufacturers continue to narrow the gap between their production scale and foreign-funded enterprises through their own technological innovation, production technology transformation and production capacity upgrades.

At present, the technical requirements of FPC are getting higher and higher, such as the line width is getting narrower and narrower, the line pitch is getting narrower, the pore size is getting smaller and smaller, and the flexibility is getting higher and higher. According to Li Xiaohua, Shangda Electronics has started to independently develop high-end FPC products and has made new breakthroughs in products. The key factor to measure the technical content of FPC products is that the current electronic limit can reach 25 microns to ensure circuit output. In addition, high-end FPC products, such as multilayer blind buried vias, are also ready for production.

In addition to meeting the development of the domestic market, the overseas market has become another breakthrough for domestic FPC companies. The development of domestic enterprises for more than ten years mainly depends on the next step of domestic customers, and the future sales growth momentum of enterprises will mainly rely on foreign markets. The technical requirements for orders in foreign markets are relatively high. In terms of price, the added value of foreign orders will also be higher than domestic orders.

Domestic FPC manufacturers must first enter the overseas market before they can have production equipment and management. The 10th anniversary of Apple's mobile phone started another cycle of innovation. We believe that the functional innovation represented by OLED3D camera biometric wireless charging and the upcoming 5G era will completely increase the penetration of FPC on smart phones. The massive application of new functions will lead to a general increase in the number of internal items and subdivision values of BOM watches. Brings a new growth space to FPC. With FPC core technology reserves, and actively expanding production, to meet the new growth momentum, local high-quality manufacturers will accelerate the overtaking speed.