Taiwan has been the leader in the global PCB sector in terms of production value and technology development, and China has grown rapidly to unseat Japan as the world's second largest PCB supplier, according to industry sources.

Prismark statistics show that Taiwan commanded the largest share, at 31.3%, of global PCB production value of US$62.4 billion for 2018, which surged 6% on year, lower than the corresponding growth of 8.6% in 2017.

Additionally, of the world's top-30 PCB makers by 2018 revenues, 13 comes from Taiwan, with Unitech PCB entering the list for the first time thanks to its stable revenue increases for radar boards and rigid-flex boards.

China came in second with a 23% share of the global PCB output value in 2018, higher than about 20% for Japan and sharply up from 17.4% in 2017.

This is despite the fact that only three China-based PCB makers managed to squeeze into the top-30 list in 2018, namely Dongshan Precision Manufacturing (DSBJ), Shenan Circuits and Kinwong Electronic, which all posted impressive revenue increases for the year.

Taiwan has five among top-10

In 2018, there were five Taiwanese makers among the world's top-10 PCB makers by revenues, namely Zhen Ding Technology (ZDT), Unimicron Technology, Compeq Manufacturing, Tripod Technology and HannStar Board. These makers have been engaged in slightly different PCB technologies and application fields, and their clients are mostly first-tier brand vendors in diverse domains.

Among them, ZDT is the world's largest PCB maker with annual revenues expanding 8.9% on year to US$3.89 billion in 2018, widening its gap with the No. 2 player Nippon Mektron to over US$1 billion, due to its constant investment in technology development and capacity expansion. ZDT now leads in flexible board and substrate-like PCB (SLP) technologies, and has also completed deployments in rigid-flex boards, IC substrates, and COF substrates.

Both Unimicron and Compeq, with deep deployments in PCBs for handsets and consumer electronics, saw their 2018 revenues suffer larger falls from 2017 amid lackluster sales at terminal consumer markets.

In contrast, multiple deployments at Tripod helped prevent its revenues from declining significantly in 2018. Meanwhile, HannStar Board has also gradually shifted its business focus from notebook-use PCBs to those for servers and network communication equipment, and is foraying into the auto-use PCB space by acquiring Japan Elna PCB plant.

Rapid expansions at China makers

Most Taiwan makers are wary of their Chinese rivals' rapid expansions. DSBJ, for instance, has managed to score annual revenues of over US$1 billion within two years by acquiring US-based FPCB maker Mflex and Hong Kong's PCB assembler Multek. Shennan Circuits saw its 2018 revenues shoot up 36% on year on robust shipments of PCBs for 5G base stations to major clients such as Huawei and ZTE.

In contrast, Japan's top PCB maker Nippon Mektron witnessed its revenues plunge 14.4% on year in 2018, with the declines mainly seen in FPCB products. In fact, of Japan's major FPCB makers, only Fujikura posted a positive revenue growth in 2018.

Japan's top-5 PCB makers - Nippon Mektron, Fujikura, Ibiden, Meiko and Sumitomo Denko - all operate PCB as part of their businesses except for Meiko as the only pure PCB maker. They usually lag behind pure PCB makers in technology development and capacity expansion, thus gradually losing ground in the market now that PCB is an increasingly capital- and technology-intensive industry. Nevertheless, Japan makers are strong in offering auto-use PCBs for their country's carmakers.

By: DocMemory
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