Automotive PCB market Trend Analysis I

The rapid expansion of the automotive PCB market

 In terms of automotive PCB, five major automotive electronic systems, such as power engine control system, body control safety system, on-board communication system, indoor installation system and lighting system, promote the upgrading of PCB system. At present, automobile PCB is mainly composed of 4-6 layers, accounting for 51%. On-board entertainment, new energy vehicles and millimeter wave radar will pull up the proportion of HDI, thick copper board and high-frequency board. Auto sales are picking up, and the trend of automobile electronic and new energy vehicle penetration resonates, driving the rapid expansion of the automotive PCB market.

The trend of terminal high density promotes HDI penetration, and the layout of domestic manufacturers is accelerated.

HDI is one of the fastest growing circuits in PCB application. HDI's high integration and downstream customers are mainly mobile terminal products and computer products, which are strongly driven by the demand of smart phones. At the same time, mobile phones have the highest technical capability requirements for HDI application, leading to the upgrading of HDI technology from the traditional first-order and second-order to gradually import multi-order, and the subsequent medium-high technology to Any Layer and SLP. Tablet, computer and intelligent speaker products are matched with HDI products under the chip miniaturization scheme to accelerate the expansion of HDI market.

The production of HDI is facing a bottleneck

HDI product investment threshold is high, leading to the lack of investment momentum of domestic manufacturers in the early stage. Via technology is the core of the HDI products technical threshold, and the drilling machine and exposure machine is HDI investment barriers. According to a company announcement, drilling machines and exposure machines accounted for 59% of the book value of the core equipment. Because the HDI process requires higher precision of drilling and wiring than ordinary hardboard PCB, the core manufacturers choose overseas drilling equipment. The price of a single set of equipment is 700,000-800,000 yuan, the delivery cycle is more than half a year, thus production expansion is usually facing a bottleneck. HDI products are seriously stratified. The average unit price difference between the low-level first-order HDI and the high-level Anylayer HDI can be more than 2 times. However, in the early stage of mass production, manufacturers must start from low-class products and gradually introduce high-end products, with an introduction cycle of more than one year.

It is urgent for domestic manufacturers to improve the layout of HDI products.

The imbalance between the ownership of HDI production capacity and the ownership of manufacturing site demands that domestic manufacturers have the right to speak. The distribution proportion of global HDI manufacturing sites and the country of affiliation is not matched. According to the classification of manufacturing sites, the production capacity distribution of Hong Kong, China and mainland China accounts for 59%, while only 17% according to the location of affiliation. On the one hand, the main downstream of HDI comes from mobile phones, and a relatively complete mobile phone component industry chain has been formed in China. The manufacturing location of HDI is consistent with the industrial chain location, leading to the production capacity layout of most overseas manufacturers in Hong Kong and mainland China. There is a mismatch between the distribution of production capacity and the location of production capacity, so it is urgent for domestic manufacturers to improve the layout of HDI products.