In 2020, the OUTBREAK of COVID-19 and the superimposed trade frictions between China and the US have greatly impacted the PCB market in China. But bucking the trend is the resilience of an explosion in online applications, which also shows how China's Printed Circuit Boards industry is evolving to include higher-value, more versatile products. In the future, as enterprises strive to break the supply bottleneck of PCB raw materials, focus on the demand of 5G and other segments, and avoid low-end competition, China's PCB market is expected to embrace a leapfrog development.
China's PCB industry is increasingly resilient
Since 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic combined with the escalation of china-us trade frictions has had a lasting impact on the world economy, and the global division of labor in manufacturing has undergone profound changes. Affected by this, the PCB market is significantly volatile, which is mainly reflected in the price rise of raw materials, the sharp fluctuation of PCB terminal demand and the closed production lag of factories. At the beginning of the outbreak, China's PCB market was particularly affected.
However, due to the huge growth of online applications driven by the epidemic, strong demand for consumer products such as desktop computers, notebooks and tablets, as well as infrastructure products such as Internet equipment, cloud equipment and artificial intelligence equipment, drove the growth of China's PCB market. According to the data calculated by CCID Consulting, the market size in 2020 will reach 26032 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 10.4%, 0.2 percentage points higher than the same period, reflecting strong resilience.
PCB in China is in the critical period of iterative upgrading
PCB belongs to the electronic information basic industry, which is greatly affected by the cyclical fluctuations of macro economy. At present, the global PCB enterprises are mainly distributed in China, Japan, South Korea and other places. PCB industry has a wide range of downstream application fields, which are less affected by a single industry, so they are scattered, with many manufacturers, low market concentration and full competition. In recent years, China has become the world's largest PCB production region, and the trend of iterative upgrading from low-end to high-end is remarkable.
The development of 5G commercial networks continues to be steady. In the medium and long term, the general trend of 5G communication construction will not change, and the Chinese government also proposed to "intensify the construction of 5G network and gigabit optical network to enrich the application scenarios" when deploying the key work for 2021. Take routers and switches and other equipment in the backbone network for example, the current mainstream specification single Port can support the speed of 100Gbps. As the data volume driven by 5G will grow by multiple times, it will be promoted to be popularized to 400Gbps, thus bringing the industry growth in the field of communication market board. Generate strong demand for high frequency and high speed PCB products.
Car electronics hit bottom and bounced back. Affected by the epidemic, vehicle manufacturers because of supply chain instability and low market demand and shutdown, auto market demand fell sharply. However, with the recovery of car production, car sales also picked up from the bottom, coupled with the general trend of automotive electrification, intelligence and networking, automotive electronics for advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), new energy vehicles and other fields of high-end PCB demand is strong, the automobile board market shows a V-shaped reversal trend, rapid recovery.
In order to actively respond to the market demand, the performance, technology and product structure of PCB products in China have been greatly optimized. Look from the product performance, China PCB to develop in the direction of high precision, high density and high reliability, improve performance, specialization, scale and green production mode gradually popularization, dongshan precision, shennan circuit PCB giants such as China continues to optimize the product structure to adapt to the communication, servers, storage, car electronics, consumer electronics, and other areas of the application requirements. In terms of technology, Chinese PCB enterprises have further increased their investment in technology research and development, focusing on high density interconnect board (HDI) and high speed and high frequency multilayer board. From the perspective of product structure, 8-16 layer multilayer board and 18-layer super high-rise board in China PCB market gradually replace low-order products and become the mainstream of the market.
Focus on segments to avoid low-end competition
Since the second half of 2020, affected by the international market copper, gold, oil and other commodities, gold, copper, tin, aluminum, glass fiber cloth, epoxy resin, copper clad PCB raw materials have increased in price. Enterprises should optimize the order structure, improve process capacity, speed up technological innovation, improve the depth of customer cooperation, strengthen supplier development, strengthen raw material inventory management and other means to ensure the safety and stability of the supply chain, reduce the impact of rising raw material prices.
5g commercial entered the stage of steady ground each key link security requirement, PCB downstream application promotion opportunity has come, such as the development of Chinese PCB enterprises should hold niche opportunity, rapidly to technology accumulation into the relative competitive advantage on the market, consolidate and strengthen itself in 5 g, automotive electronics, data center in areas such as market image and the product layout. At the same time, in the research and development of trend products that affect the future, it is necessary to concentrate superior resources and organize technical experts to tackle key problems, strengthen its own advantages and seize the development draught.
The global PCB industry has further shifted its focus to China, and Chinese PCB enterprises have ushered in a new opportunity for development. However, with the gradual reduction of cost and market advantages, the industrial expansion continues to increase. In the context of the rapid development of the industry, with the gradual release of new capacity, PCB industry market competition will become more intense, to achieve dislocation competition, complementary development become an important direction. Chinese PCB enterprises should carefully study the development trend of the industry, formulate the overall development strategy and business strategy in accordance with their own conditions, continue to strengthen the leading edge of product technology, strive to build a unique technological threshold, and focus on digital transformation, continuously improve quality and efficiency, cultivate superior products, and explore new growth points of the industry.