With the end of the Chinese New Year holiday, many domestic PCB factories have started work one after another. How is the industry boom?
The PCB sector will likely continue to have a challenging year in 2023 due to the consumer electronics industry’s and other industries’ ongoing decline, which started last year.
According to Prismark, the PCB market would have a 2% reduction in 2023. With regard to the packaging substrate market, single and double panels declined by 3%, MLB and FPC’s growth rate slowed to 2%, and HDI fell by 1%. The PCB market may perform poorly if there is a recession in the second half of 2023, with a growth rate of -5% or less.
In terms of downstream demand, according to shipment forecasts, 2023 smartphone global +2.8%, China -0.9% (full-year forecast, same later), PC global -2.3%, automotive China +3%, which shows that the growth rate of basic consumer products is not optimistic.
It is worth noting that the growth of innovative consumer shipments is more optimistic, such as folding mobile phones +51.4% globally, China +33.2%, wearable devices +5.5% globally, VR/AR devices +23%/+70% globally, new energy vehicles +34% in China, servers +2.1% globally, so although the overall consumer demand is still under pressure in 2023, if we focus on a certain segment innovation point of the industry chain will benefit significantly.
In addition, this year, the domestic epidemic policy has been fully liberalised, the manufacturing industry continues to rebound, although the consumer electronics market will not recover overnight, but the cold has been gradually receding, there are many industry players for the second half of the market boom optimistic attitude.
Relevant research organizations recommended paying attention to the direction of innovation, particularly in the areas of automotive (high current and high voltage require thick copper board), servers (new platform upgrades require higher levels of PCB board, higher grade CCL, lower profile copper foil), and packaging substrates.