Advanced PCB (Printed Circuit Boards) Industry Report

Tag : Single Layer PCB
flexible board, and that of Korea in IC board, memory module andmobile phone boards. In recent years, Taiwan has made rapidprogress in IC board; Nanya has exceeded IBIDEN, ranking firstglobally, and the overall production value of IC boards hassurpassed South Korea. Besides, Taiwan also acts as the world'sanother largest mobile phone board producing area, sharing over 60%of the global market. In mainland China, there are 1200 plus PCBenterprises, most of which are engaged in single-sided PCB andmultilayer PCB with low technology content as well as downstreamproducts usually including computer motherboard and inferiorconsumable electronics. Furthermore, only a few of PCB enterprisesin military and aerospace fields survive in North America. InEurope, PCB industry has been gradually shrinking due to the strictdemand in environmental protection and weak competitive abilitycaused by workers' unwillingness towards overtime; hence in thefuture, Europe-based PCB enterprises will all disappear, or betransferred to mainland China.

As for the traditional PCB field, owing to the lower threshold andfurious competition, manufacturers are successively seeking newprofit points, which can be concluded into the following threedirections:

The first is IC board. As the capital intensive investment, ICboard covers semiconductor packaging industry and PCB industry,requiring manufacturers to own technologies in the two fields. SoIC board has the highest threshold, yet with the largest profit.All of the top PCB manufacturers show great interest in IC board,such as the world largest PCB enterprise - IBIDEN, the world secondlargest PCB enterprise - Shinko Electric, Taiwan-based largest PCBenterprise - Nanya PCB and Taiwan's second largest PCB enterprise -World Wiser Electronics.

The second is the special fields, including mobile phone board,photoelectric board, laptop computer PCB and memory module. Taiwanis the world largest supplying region in mobile phone board, andover 65% of the world's mobile phone boards come from Taiwan.

In the photoelectric field, due to the costliness of horizontalelectroplating equipments and the superior demand on interlayerregistration accuracy and electroplating level up degree, the entrythreshold is comparatively high despite being 4-6 layer board.Taiwan-based Tripod Electronic and Wus Printed Circuit Co., Ltd.are the two giants in this field, while Dynamic Electronics andTaiwan PCB TechVest Co., Ltd. are regarded as the rising stars;besides, Yang An Electronics and Gold Circuit Electronics have alsomade progress, and the breakthrough in vertical electroplatingtechnology made by Yang An Electronics is worth mentioning. In thelaptop computer PCB area, over 60% of the market share goes toHannStar Board Corp. and Gold Circuit Electronics, Wah Toon, TripodElectronic, Vertex Precision Electronics and Cadac Electronic alsoshare certain market, especially Wah Toon which is trying to gainmore market margin in this field. As for memory module, thoughbeing PCB similarly, the electromotive and shaping equipmentsneeded by memory PCB all have exclusive devices, unable to bewidely used manufacturing other PCBs, so this part requires specialinvestment. Meanwhile, due to the low profit margin of memorymodule, the scale should be large enough so as to make a gain.Tripod Electronic, SIMMTECH, Dade Motor, South Korea Circuit andCopam Electronics invested by Brain Power predominate in thisfield. South Korea, is acting as not only the memory base but alsothe memory module PCB base. However, Taiwan-based Tripod Electronichas unique features as well, ranking second globally with Samsungand Qimonda as its clients.

The third direction is to develop towards EMS manufacturers. Thecrucial strategy for PCB manufacturers and EMS manufacturers iscost control. These manufacturers usually manufactured LCD-TV, DVD,and PDP-TV circuit board in the past, and afterwards began toassemble these products, such as Ya Hsin. Additionally, MeikoElectronics also has similar intention, and Viasystems Group, thelargest PCB manufacturer in North America, also orients itself atan EMS manufacturer.