Is there any future for China's PCB industry?
1. China accounts for more than half of the global PCB market, and the mainland is rising.
Printed circuit board (PCB) products have been used in commerce since 1948, and have been widely used since 1950s. The traditional PCB industry is labor-intensive, and its technology-intensive degree is lower than that of semiconductor industry. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the semiconductor industry has gradually shifted from the United States, Japan to Taiwan and mainland China. Up to now, China has become an influential producer of PCB in the world, and the output value of PCB accounts for more than 50% of the world's total.
In 2018, the global output value of printed circuit boards reached 63.6 billion US dollars.
According to the data from the Institute of Obstetrics and Technology of the Institute of Industry and Research, although Taiwan still won the championship with 31.3% of the global market share in 2018, the proportion of China's mainland reached 23%, and the market share and growth rate increased steadily, gradually pushing Taiwan into the leading position. Together, they account for 54.3% of the world's PCB output and are firmly on the NO 1 throne.
2. In 2018, China's PCB output value exceeded 34 billion yuan, with multi-layer circuit boards dominating.
China's electronic circuit industry in the "industrial transfer" path, and China has a healthy and stable domestic demand market and significant manufacturing advantages, attracting a large number of foreign-funded enterprises to shift the focus of production to the mainland of China.
After years of accumulation, the domestic PCB industry has gradually matured. As the main production area of single-layer and multi-layer PCB, the mainland of China is further extending to the high-end market.
In recent years, China's PCB output value scale has been expanding year by year.
According to the statistical data of "China Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing Industry Market Foresight and Investment Strategic Planning Analysis Report" issued by Prospective Industry Research Institute, the output value of PCB in China reached 20.17 billion US dollars in 2010, and by 2017, the output value of PCB in China had increased to 29.73 billion US dollars, an increase of 9.7% year on year, accounting for 50.53% of the world.
By the end of 2018, China's PCB industry has reached an all-time high in terms of output scale and growth rate, reaching 34.5 billion US dollars, an increase of 16.0% over the same period last year.
With the development trend of downstream electronic products in pursuit of light, thin, short and small, PCB continues to develop towards high precision, high integration and lightweight.
However, compared with Japan, Korea, Taiwan and other regions, the PCB products in mainland China are still dominated by low-end products such as single sided PCB and double sided PCB, multi-layer PCB below 8 layer. In 2017, 41.5% of PCB products in China were made of multi-layer boards.
3. Industry is mainly concentrated in Jiangsu and Guangdong
PCB products, as the basic electronic components, are mostly built around downstream industrial concentration areas.
At present, there are about 1500 PCB enterprises in Mainland China, mainly distributed in areas with high concentration of electronic industry, large demand for basic components and good transportation and water and electricity conditions, such as Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and Bohai Rim.
Among them, Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces have a high degree of agglomeration. In 2017, the proportion of PCB industry sales revenue in Guangdong reached 46.26% and that in Jiangsu reached 34.77%. The total proportion of the two provinces reached 81%, and the regional concentration was relatively high.
4. The concentration of enterprises is low, and foreign-funded enterprises occupy the main market position.
China's PCB industry is developing rapidly, but the contribution of initial output value mainly comes from the capacity of foreign capital in China, and the competitiveness of domestic enterprises is weak.
According to the statistics of CPCA, the proportion of foreign companies in PCB industry in China is 58%. Although the number of domestic firms has increased, the scale is relatively small. According to the revenue data of domestic PCB enterprises in 2017, the proportion of domestic firms with a scale of more than 1 billion is less than 30%.
In the top ten list of domestic PCB manufacturers, only two Chinese local enterprises are listed, with the aggregation degree of 40.18% in the top ten. Chinese PCB enterprises are small in scale and low in aggregation degree.
5. Emerging Industries Promote Industry Development and China's PCB Output Value will exceed US$40 billion in the future
China is the world's influential manufacturing base and consumer market of electronic information products. With the continuous advancement of Made in China 2025, a number of well-known local enterprises have emerged in emerging markets such as mobile internet, Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and driverless cars to support electricity. Sub-manufacturing industry provides more opportunities for development.
In addition, since 2019, Henan, Beijing, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Jiangxi, Chongqing and other places have issued action plans or plans to support the landing of 5G industry.
With the advent of 5G commercial era, the construction of network infrastructure such as base stations is accelerating, and 5G communication equipment will require more communication materials and demand more, major operators will invest more in 5G construction in the future, so communication PCB will have a huge market in the future.
It is expected that China's PCB output will exceed 40 billion US dollars by 2022, and reach 43.8 billion US dollars by 2024. There is a lot of room for market scale improvement.
