News briefing

 

    According to the statistics released by Japan Electronics Packaging Circuits Industry Association (JPCA), the output of printed circuit boards (including PCB, FPC, and SLP) in Japan has dropped by 16.4%, compared to the same period in April 2018 to 1,011,000 square meter, resulting in a decline for the fifth consecutive month. In addition, the output value has contracted by 10.2% to J¥34.918 billion, resulting in a decline for the fourth consecutive month.

 

Impact analysis

 

    The global market share of Japan’s PCB industry has dropped from approximately 23% in 2011 to 19.1% in 2018. The scale of output value has also failed to increase from 2011 to 2018 and has rather dropped by 4% to approximately US$13.2 billion. Within the same period that Japan’s PCB industry experienced a decline, the global PCB industry’s output value increased from $59.9 billion to $69.1 billion. In fact, the reason that the output value of Japan’s PCB industry has not developed with the global output value is mainly due to the competition from manufacturers from the mainland and Taiwan. Especially after the rise of mainland-based manufacturers, Japanese manufacturing plants and factories have almost withdrawn from the market of low-end products in full scale, while the news of various measures such as strategically closing down factories or organizing sales with the business department is often reported. In addition, the brand advantage of electronic end products that Japan has successfully experienced in the past is almost entirely absent, which has prompted more Japanese PCB manufacturers to focus on the niche-market with greater effort and attention. Yet, Japanese manufacturers are already taking risks and enduring the period of decline before thorough changes have been fully implemented, not to mention the fact that the results of transformation in the past few years have fully emerged. 

 

    In the first quarter of the year 2019, the revenue of Japanese manufacturers has not improved significantly. When compared with the same period last year, all FCP manufacturers are found to have a recession over 2 digits. In particular, the growth rate of the largest PCB in Japan, Mektron, has dropped by 23% in the first quarter for the year 2019 as the increase for vehicle FPC is less than the decrease for mobile phones. Evidently, these two major manufacturers of IC substrate, IBIDEN, and Shinko can barely maintain the same scale of revenue as that of last year as they have experienced a slight decline of approximately 0.5%. In particular, since IBIDEN has many more applications in terms of IC substrate as well as the persistent demand for ABF substrate, it has become the best performing manufacturer of Japanese PCB since the beginning of 2019.

 

     In recent years, the Japanese PCB industry has experienced a critical period of industrial transformation, however, Japan’s PCB industry is still challenged by the fluctuating nature of the industry. As such, the PCB industry is forced to deliberate on the reliability of high-value as the only niche for survival. Although the circuit board is dubbed as the mother of electronic products, the proportion of high-priced and high-value circuit board products has remained relatively low. As for those extremely high-end and rare circuit board applications (skin sensing, remote brain-wave control, and others) often presented in the annual JPCA Show, the uncertainty of these products’ specific commercial value will be considered before commercialization is even achieved.