What Is the Real Status of China PCB Industry?

From the overall global situation, according to NT Information statistics, there are approximately 2,800 PCB factories in the world, of which 116 are valued at more than $100 million, mainly located in the United States, Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan.

Among them, the Asia-Pacific region is an important participant. According to the research of PCB market, the Asia-Pacific region accounts for 90% of the market share, with a compound annual growth rate of 4-6% from 2020 to 2024. The top four in Asia that account for 90% of the PCB output value are China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.

In the recent over ten years, China's PCB manufacturing industry has developed rapidly with its advantages in labor, resources, policies, and industrial agglomeration, and has now become the world's largest PCB production base.

Since the end of the 1990s, China's PCB output value has grown rapidly. China has continuously introduced advanced foreign technology and equipment and has become the fastest growing region in the world's PCB output value. According to Prismark  data, in the past 10 years, PCB output value in China has increased from US$15.037 billion in 2008 to US$29.732 billion in 2017, with a compound annual growth rate of 7.87% (global CAGR of 2.21%), which is significantly higher than the global growth rate.

In 2006, China surpassed Japan for the first time and became the world's largest PCB production base. By 2017, the output value of PCB in China has exceeded half of the world's. From 2015 to 2019, the average annual compound growth rate of PCB output value in China reached 5.61%, which is significantly higher than the global average growth rate, and the output value is expected to reach US$37.052 billion in 2021.With the development of China's 5G, cloud computing, Internet of Things and other industries in 2021, China's PCB industry is moving towards a higher level.

Hayao Nakahara, President of N.T.Information, a global PCB industry research authority, announced the NTI-100 2020 global top 100 PCB rankings and industry trends (NTI-100: annual turnover exceeds 100 million US dollars). According to his survey report, in 2020, a total of 128 manufacturers have revenues of more than 100 million U.S. dollars on the list, an increase of 6 from 122 in 2019, and their output value has grown from 62.342 billion US$ to 68.789 billion US$, a growth rate of 10.3%.Compared with last year, the number of the companies on the list in each region is as following: 56 in China (+4), 25 in Taiwan (-2), 21 in Japan (+3), 14 in South Korea (+2), 4 in the U.S. (equal), 5 in Europe (equal), Southeast Asia 3 (-1).

In the future, under the environment where emerging technologies such as 5G communications, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, industry 4.0, and the Internet of Things accelerate the penetration in China, and the PCB industry, as the basic force playing the role of connecting in the entire electronic information manufacturing industry chain, will enter the technology and product new cycle. According to N.T.Information (NTI) forecasts, China's PCB output value will exceed 40 billion US$ by 2022 and will reach 43.8 billion US$ by 2024, still, there are much space for improvement in the market size.