Why 5G era PCB printed circuit board will usher in a good time

Why 5G era PCB will usher in a good time

The arrival of 5G is the beginning of the interconnection of all things in the true sense. 5G will complete the interconnection of all things in the world. With the advent of the 5G era, communication PCBs will also have a great time!

PCB is the printed circuit board (Printed Circuit Board), known as the "mother of electronic products", all electronic equipment or products need to be equipped with PCB boards, so that its downstream demand is continuous and stable, and its industry development level can be to a certain extent Reflect the development speed and technical level of a country or region's electronic information industry.

PCB subdivision products and their application fields

According to Prismark data, the global PCB industry has maintained a compound annual growth rate of about 4% over the past 10 years. In 2017, the global PCB output value was US $ 58.8 billion, a year-on-year growth rate of 8.60%. China ’s PCB output value was US $ 29.7 billion, a year-on-year growth rate of 9.70%, which is higher than the global growth rate. From the perspective of the regional distribution of PCB output value, the focus of the PCB industry continues to shift to Asia, and China has become the most important player in the global PCB industry, accounting for more than 50% of the global PCB output value.

Looking at the links of the PCB industry chain alone, it is in the middle of the overall industry chain

Upstream of it are various raw materials for PCB production, mainly including copper clad laminates, copper foils, copper balls, prepregs, gold salts, inks, dry films and other chemical materials. The main raw materials of flexible circuit boards also include cover films and electromagnetic films.

Proportion of upstream PCB manufacturing raw material costs

The downstream is mainly used in the fields of computers, communication equipment, industrial control, automotive electronics, consumer electronics and aerospace, with a very wide coverage. Among them, communications, computers, and consumer electronics are the three most important application terminals in the PCB industry, with demand accounting for 27%, 27%, and 14%, which directly affect the development of the upstream PCB industry.

The big winner in the 5G era-PCB

(1) Base station PCB prices and prices have risen in the 5G era

PCB application products in the field of communication

First, the number of 5G base stations will increase compared to 4G. According to the public data of China's three major telecom operators, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom added 400,000, 380,000, and 340,000 4G base stations in 2016, respectively. The total number was increased to 1.51 million, 890,000, and 740,000, for a total of about 3.14 million. According to estimates, the number of small base stations in the future will be more than 10 times the current base station market.

The application of pcb in base station communication equipment Figure 6: 100G communication backbone network transmission tell system board

Secondly, due to the characteristics of 5G high speed and high frequency, as far as a single base station is concerned, the value of the communication board will also be greatly improved. On the one hand, with the increase of 5G frequency bands, the increase in frequency has greatly increased the number of RF front-end components, and Massive MIMO is integrated on AAU. The PCB area on AAU has greatly increased, the number of layers has increased, and the added value of antenna AAU has been added to the PCB board and overlay Copper plate transfer; on the other hand, with the substantial increase in 5G transmission data, there is a higher requirement for the data processing capability of the base station BBU. The BBU will use a larger area and a higher number of PCBs. The substrate requires high-speed high-frequency materials. According to conservative estimates, the PCB value of a single 5G macro base station is more than double that of 4G.

(2) The demand for thin and light 5G mobile phones, tablet PCs, etc. drives the FPC market space to increas

IDC predicts that the first batch of 5G smartphones will be launched in the second half of 2019. By 2020, 5G mobile phone shipments will reach 7% of total smartphone shipments (approximately 212 million units), and will account for 18% by 2022. .

According to industry research, there are at least 20 FPC item numbers in the new Apple mobile phone, with a value space of more than 20 US dollars, and tablet products are also expected to be further thin and light, and will use a large number of FPC products. At the same time, leading domestic brands such as Huawei, OPPO and vivo have also increased their FPC usage to 10-12.

In 2016, the FPC global market scale increased to 85.2 billion yuan, and the FPC China market scale increased to 31.6 billion yuan. It is expected that by 2021, the Chinese FPC market is expected to reach 51.6 billion yuan, with a compound growth rate of 10%.

(3) Automotive electronics, electrification and intelligence will bring incremental market space to PCB

First, intelligent driving & car electronics: The electronicization of cars will increase the amount of PCBs used in vehicles. In 2010, automotive electronics accounted for about 30% of the vehicle BOM. It is expected that this proportion will increase to 50% by 2030. At present, the PCB area of mid-end models is about 0.5 ~ 0.7 square meters, and the PCB area of economy cars is 0.3 ~ 0.4 square meters. Assuming that the average PCB price is 1,000 yuan / square meter, the average bicycle value is about 800 yuan. The use area of automotive PCB is about 2.5-3 square meters, and the value of the bicycle is more than 2500 yuan. With the deepening of the electronic level of automobiles, the demand area of automotive PCB will gradually increase. In addition, the advanced driving assistance system ADAS for intelligent driving also requires a large number of PCBs.

Second, new energy vehicles: The amount of PCBs used in new energy vehicles is much higher than that of traditional cars. If the PCB for bicycles is initially estimated to be 3 square meters, assuming that the average PCB price is 1,000 yuan / square meter, then new energy vehicles from 2018 to 2020 Corresponding to the new PCB market size is 2.850 billion yuan, 3.960 billion yuan, 5.430 billion yuan.

(4) Cloud computing

Data centers are driving the demand for high-end high-speed PCB products such as high-frequency and high-speed. Currently, global data centers are developing toward high-speed and large-capacity features. According to IDC statistics, the global data center market size reached USD 45.2 billion in 2016, with a growth rate of 17%. The growth of China's data center is significantly faster than the global pace. In 2016, the scale was 71.5 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 37%.