High-end PCBs lead production this year

Global PCB market is expected to achieve annual growth of 3.1% by 2019. Korea’s domestic PCB market is also expected to overcome last year’s declining trend to reassume growth this year.

According to industry status report recently published by Korea Printed Circuit Association (KPCA), high-end PCBs for mobiles and networks and PCBs for car electronics are projected to lead PCB market’s growth trend this year.

▲KPCA Show, 2015

In terms of use, PCBs for telecommunication equipments including mobile phones accounted for 31.3% of global PCB production in 2015. Average growth rate of PCBs for mobile phones were 4.7% and PCBs for cars (3.1%), medical equipments (6.3%), etc. are expected to show continuing growth.

Domestic PCB production volume in 2015 is known to have declined by 1.6% compared to previous year, recording KRW 9.1 trillion, due to stagnation of domestic premium PCB market. However, 2016 is projected to see slight growth in high-end PCBs including embedded PCB, semiconductor PKG PCB, Multi Layer Board (MLB), etc. and car-electronics PCBs, resulting in 1.1% growth rate and market size of KRW 9.2 billion.


▲Global PCB market share by use (2015)

Restructuring required for domestic companies with focus on high value-added PCBs

In terms of PCB type, flexible PCBs stopped minus growth trend and achieved partial recovery this year. Widely used in smart devices, flexible PCBS suffered significant decline of 8.1% last year but achieved growth rate of 1.5% this year, which amounts to KRW 2.08 trillion in market size. Especially as demand on high value-added RF PCBs increased for smartphone’s dual cameras, PKG PCBs are projected to show growth rate of 0.8% and market size of KRW 2.45 trillion.

 
▲Global PCB production by region

The industry status report predicts that “this year, production of high-performance PKG PCBs and build-up PCBs targeting medium- and low-priced smart devices for overseas emerging economies including China is expected to increase,” and suggests that “restructuring centered on high value-added PCB production is required on the basis of electronic industry infrastructure of global system companies in Korea.” The report also projected that “this year, new investment by PCB companies is likely to be minimal. But investment in the field of semiconductor PKG PCBs and streamlining is expected to increase.”