Strong demand drives the PCB market to continue to grow

The analysis report of the US electronics industry information consulting company Prismark pointed out that from 2010 to 2015, China will become the fastest growing PCB market in the world with a compound annual growth rate of nearly 10%. By 2015, the share of HDI PCB output in the Chinese market will increase from 42% today to 50%. In May of this year, AT&S, Altes Technology and Systems Technologies announced its market strategy to increase its production capacity and market share in China to meet the global demand for high-end printing due to the rapid growth of the smartphone and tablet market. PCB board product requirements. According to the company's 2011/12 second quarter financial report: AT&S second-quarter sales reached 131.4 million euros, operating profit of 15 million euros, the best in history. It is worth mentioning that 60% of the total revenue in the second quarter comes from the Chinese market.

According to Altes CEO Andreas Gesternmayer, “Ultimus’ total investment in the Chinese market has been US$700 million so far. We have just completed the production of the last production line at the Shanghai plant and Chongqing’s factory has also started construction. It is progressing smoothly.The capacity of the Shanghai plant was fully loaded at the end of July 2011. Three new production lines were put into operation in May and August this year, again confirming the growth in blowout and demand for high-end PCB products.Overall, the capacity of the Shanghai factory A total of 30% increase to achieve an annual output of 710,000 square meters of technical maximum production capacity.” As Shanghai's factory land reserves and production capacity have been completely exhausted, Otis established a new manufacturing base in China’s western city of Chongqing to meet the continuous Increased market demand. Grasma said that “the new Chongqing plant invested this year will be divided into three phases for construction, covering a total area of ​​125,000 square meters, and will start production in 2013. At present, the first phase of construction has started in June 2011. We are proceeding smoothly. We will install infrastructure and equipment according to customer needs and new technology.” Although investing in Western cities, there is no difference between the plant's technical content and the production of products in Shanghai. It can be seen that it is not The practice of setting up factories in the Midwest in order to find lower costs.

According to ITU, China and India have strongly promoted the development of mobile devices. At the same time, the data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China in February 2011 also showed that as of December 2010, China had 850 million mobile phone users, which accounted for 64% of the total population; of these, 3G mobile phone users were 47 million. As the center of the mobile consumer market, China is playing an increasingly important role in the global market of Ots, with more than 60% of the annual revenue of the mobile device business coming from China. Otis decided to relocate its mobile equipment division headquarters to Shanghai, China, due to its importance in the mobile device supply chain. This measure not only shows confidence in the Asian market, but also reflects that Otis has become a mobile company. The important supplier in the equipment market.

In addition to the fast-growing consumer electronics market, Otis's high-end PCB products are also widely used in automotive electronics and industrial electronics. These areas have a great desire for technological upgrading of the PCB itself, how to increase the PCB density and reduce The PCB thickness is something that every PCB manufacturer thinks about. In terms of technological innovation, Otis introduced its patented ECP technology for component embedded packaging to efficiently integrate active and passive components on printed circuit boards for electronic products that require as little volume as possible and as much as possible. The traditional concept of electronic products is to load the packaged semiconductor chip onto the PCB, while the ECP technology provides another choice outside of the existing packaging method, and thus the PCB company can even enter the packaging field. In responding to the reporter's question that packaging and testing companies may integrate downstream PCB business, said: "In fact, the development of technology gives us the opportunity to enter the packaging market." The two concepts of SiBSystem in Board and SiP System in Package The development of technology gradually converges. As the linewidth on high-end PCBs is getting smaller and smaller, the production process of high-end PCB manufacturers is getting closer to the chip makers, and many lithography machines can be seen in Otis's factory, leaving them in wafer fabs. general.

Recently, due to the severe debt crisis in Europe, the global economic outlook is not optimistic. Grasma said that “according to the current macro environment, the prospects for the growth of HDI product demand are not clear, it is difficult to make quarterly forecasts. However, the market fundamentals are not. There will be changes, as well as a more attractive medium-term growth rate. If consumer spending remains unchanged at the current level, exchange rate changes do not increase, and the European and US economies do not experience a sudden and significant decline as in 2008, we also Some short-term outlook can be made. However, Christmas holidays and consumer behavior will have a significant impact on market performance."