News description
    The application range of HDI boards has gradually expanded from mobile phones to more 3C electronic products, including the application of HDI boards in automobiles. Although Chinese PCB manufacturers have joined the field quite late, they are inevitably playing the role of low-cost competitors in the market.

 

Impact analysis
   In 2018, the global PCB production scale was valued at about US$69.1 billion (including the back-end component assembly of flexible boards), where HDI accounted for about 14.7% of the output value. In other words, the global HDI output value in 2018 was approximately US$10.1 billion. Although HDI is currently not considered the world’s largest or highest growth rate of circuit board products, the compound annual growth rate of the output value from 2013~2020 is about 3.1%. Compared with about 2.5% of the global circuit board production value during the same period, the growth performance of HDI products is still superior to the overall PCB industry.

 

    In addition to smartphones, slim and lightweight PCs, satellite navigation devices, and others that are initially used as the terminal products, the vehicle’s computer engine control system, outdoor large-scale LED screens, etc. are also successively adopting HDI products. Therefore, they serve as a supporting effect for the HDI market demand. From the specification improvement aspect, the motherboards used by iPhone around 2010 had a line width/line space of 40~60 μm and an area of about 25 cm2. In 2017, the line width/line space of motherboards used by iPhone X had dropped to less than 30 μm, and the area had downsized to 14 cm2 and 10 cm2 embedded SLP products. The average unit price has doubled to at least about $10. Under the circumstances of increased volume and prices of HDI products, they can still maintain stable growth momentum in the output value of the PCB industry, despite not having an explosive market demand.

 

    Several Chinese PCB factories currently have the production capacity and mass production capacity for HDI products, including Multek, UniTest, Founder, CEE, ACME, GoWorld, LarBar, etc. However, most of them have an annual production capacity between 100,000~200,000 square meters, which is of no match with Taiwan’s large factories, whose annual production capacity is some 1 million square meters. However, from Multek’s recent investment in the construction of the mSAP production line, Chinese PCB manufacturers have officially entered the ranks of high-end HDI competition. It is thus understandable why South Korea’s LG Innotek has planned to withdraw from the HDI market and focus on more advanced carrier products in the future to avoid the fiercely-competitive Red Sea Market.