With the arrival of the traditional peak season, many applications are pouring into growth momentum. IEK, the Institute of Technology Research and Technology, and the Taiwan Circuit Board Association (TPCA) estimate that Taiwan's PCB output value is expected to maintain a growth

The traditional peak season has arrived, and a number of applications have poured growth momentum. IEK, the Institute of Technology Research and Technology, and the Taiwan Circuit Board Association (TPCA) estimate that Taiwan’s PCB output value is expected to maintain a growth trend in the second half of the year, driving the annual output value to hit a new high. IEK integrates three major products, including servers, 5G smartphones, and automotive electronics, and will be the focus of sustainable terminal applications from the second half of 2021 to 2022. Dong Zhongming, manager of the component research department of

IEK, said that in the first three quarters of this year, the server was affected by material shortages and poor shipment, which also affected the orders of relevant PCB factories. As the material shortages ease, deferred demand will emerge from the fourth quarter to the second quarter of next year. Especially Intel and AMD, it is expected that new platform CPUs will be replaced in the second half of next year, which will help the server demand continue to continue until the second half of 2022.

In addition, as the data traffic becomes larger and all data needs to be uploaded, the network load becomes larger and larger, which in turn drives the demand for edge computing servers to increase. Although the specification requirements for edge computing servers are not as huge as those in the cloud and data centers, it is an additional demand for PCB operators.

It is worth noting that the global technology manufacturers that require huge servers such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. skip HP, Huawei, Inspur, etc. and directly find assembly factories such as Inyeda, Quanta, Hon Hai and other Taiwanese factories to purchase white-brand servers continue to rise, which is also a positive help for Taiwan server PCB factories.

Overall, server demand continues to be strong, and new platforms will appear next year, which is expected to bring more complex packaging, ABF requirements with larger areas or higher layers, or the demand for higher layers of multi-layer boards to meet a higher speed and wider computing execution architecture. In terms of

5G mobile phones, Dong Zhongming said that the annual shipment of smartphones is about 1.5 billion units, which is still the protagonist of much attention. After all, no terminal application has shipped more than this product. The focus from the second half of the year to next year is the sales volume of iPhone 13, because Taiwan's share of iPhone relies on is still relatively high. Judging from past experience, from the release to the end of this year, 75 million units sold this year have reached the low standard and more than 85 million units are the high standard.

. What is sustainable is the penetration rate of 5G models, and even millimeter wave models. Although 2020 is the first year of 5G, many countries still focus on sub-6 GHz. The proportion of 5G millimeter wave mobile phones this year is less than 20%, and it is expected to increase to more than 30% next year. The increase in specifications and penetration rate will have a positive help to the PCB industry.

In terms of automotive electronics, the shortage of automotive chips in the second half of the year is still the biggest variable affecting automobile sales, but it is slowly eased. Looking forward to the future, as the degree of automotive electronicization increases year by year, the penetration rate of electric vehicles and autonomous driving continues to grow, and the demand for PCB will also increase.

Dong Zhongming said that the proportion of automobiles has changed from machinery to electronics, and the proportion of automobile boards has also changed simultaneously. In 2019, the proportion of automobile boards is mainly multi-layer boards, about 80%. Although the proportion of multi-layer boards is still large in 2021, there is a decline. The proportion of HDI and soft boards is rising. It is expected that under the trend of electric vehicles in the future, including autonomous driving and smart cockpits, cars will have more computing, power/charging systems, bringing higher-level demand to PCBs. In the future, PCBs will evolve to higher value and higher unit prices.