PCB industry has come to the end of the storm, but still need to calmly face the text catalog

Release Time:

2013-04-18 00:00

With more and more PCB enterprises with full orders, China's PCB industry is coming out of the storm and moving forward. However, is the industry really ushering in the spring and heading for recovery, or is it just a superficial phenomenon under the economic stimulus? While the impact of the economic crisis has yet to fade completely and the world economy has yet to fully stabilize, entrepreneurs should still think calmly and respond prudently.

With America's stock markets in turmoil, sustainable growth in either corporate profits or economic output seems out of reach. However, the recovery of China's economy has become a fact: according to statistics, China's economic growth in the second quarter was 7.9%, and the third quarter was a strong growth of 8.9%. At the executive meeting of The State Council held on October 21, in contrast to the cautious growth in the second quarter, it was believed that the economic and social development situation was better than expected at the beginning of the year, and the recovery trend was consolidated.

In addition, China's PCB industry also ended the treacherous half year, turned optimistic from the second quarter, and generally recovered to the level of the same period last year in the third quarter, showing a more obvious trend of progress.

Analysis from various parties proves that since the beginning of this year, the application side of the new products and new market support, so that the PCB market successfully realized recovery and growth. On the hard side, NB plant supports Intel to push the CULV platform, Smart Phone is still growing, and China's home appliances to rural areas policy opens up LCD TV market and strong domestic demand for mobile phones. CULV NB slightly increases the proportion of HDI boards adopted by NB, which helps to improve the capacity utilization rate of boards capable of producing HDI technology. Lenovo, Acer, Asus, MSI, HP, Dell and other companies in Taiwan have launched products in the second and third quarters.

After a wave of failures, the soft board market suffered little impact in this crisis. When a complete industry chain of soft board has not been formed in China, the soft board market in Taiwan has become a weather vane. Statistics show that Apple, HTC and RIM plan to launch new products. Soft boards bucked the trend with 19.8 percent growth in the second quarter, helped by Palm's return to the Smart Phone market and NB's switch to LED backlighting. And recently, Japan's EPTE released a real-time newsletter also predicted that the development of Asian PCB outside Japan will usher in a better development.

Still, the PCB industry should take a sober look at the current economic outlook for the various forecasts and analysis. China's ability to drive the global economy on its own is questionable, regardless of whether its impressive numbers stand up to scrutiny, given its dependence on manufacturing, which in turn depends on consumer demand in the United States, long the undisputed engine of the global economy. At the recent Davos forum, the chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia used figures to illustrate that there is no alternative to the US consumer, who spends $10tn a year, and China, the country with the most powerful supply capacity, has only a quarter of that of the US.

Although there are many facts to prove that the global economic downturn is expected to turn around in 2010, it will take some time for the recovery of the global real economy to adjust due to the severe damage. In China, where most of the 7.1% GDP growth in the first half of this year came from fixed-asset investment, and where bank credit reached a record 7 trillion yuan, new supply and demand imbalances could emerge. As Premier Wen Jiabao put it, "The quantity of growth or the value of growth is a question for China to resolve."

Moreover, the current development of China's economy and PCB industry largely comes from the support and pull of the national policy of 4 trillion yuan, but its subsequent power is limited. At present, domestic personal consumption confidence is still maintained at a relatively low level, and the employment gap of 12 million also highlights the weakness of consumption. The response of policy stimulus to stimulate consumption is often lagging behind, far less rapid than that of the market, which also needs to be adjusted for a long period of time.

Similarly, some say that the national economic stimulus policy, for the construction of 3G base stations, as most of the state investment, has indeed driven the growth of the industry, such as ultrasonic electronics, deep south circuit industry also benefited from the policy. However, the PCB board used in 3G mobile phones also has the problem of lack of successor, because the industry had expected the wave of 3G phone replacement has not been as expected, even less crazy than the previous switch from black and white screen phones to color phones, and consumers are not too interested in 3G, and generally believe that the current mobile phone functions are more comprehensive. And distrust of the stability of electronic novelty has kept most in a wait-and-see mode. What's more, at present Huawei has been developing 4G mobile phones, if its success, then 3G mobile phone is likely to be a transitional term, where do you dare to rely on its to drive the development of the industry fantasy?

In the LED sector, which has high hopes, LED TV and LED lighting can bring growth opportunities for PCB manufacturers, and their energy-saving and diversified functions are increasingly accepted by the market and consumers. However, the development of LED in China is not as smooth as expected. For LED products, which are still "luxury" products in the short term, There are still many difficulties in large-scale promotion, such as lack of core technology, high price and lack of protection of technical standards, which hinder the speed and breadth of its promotion. Moreover, photoelectric board, soft and hard combination board, soft board and other supporting LED products in our country PCB industry is weak link, manufacturer quantity and output is less, benefit is limited.

The new product CULV processor appeared in the second quarter of this year, although it has contributed to the demand for carrier board to a certain extent, the price drop of CULV processor is too large, which inevitably has an impact on the shipping price of carrier board manufacturers. Moreover, this product is still testing the market temperature, so the recovery range is limited.

In summary, the domestic PCB enterprises this time forward, mainly benefited from the domestic policies of the multi-pull. At present, in order to reduce the risk of inflation caused by strong economic stimulus, the government stimulus "exit strategy" has become the consensus of governments, but the exit timing and scale are different. Therefore, PCB enterprises, which rely heavily on domestic policy driving, should be more prudent in the face of economic trends and should not be blindly optimistic.

The still-sluggish world economy is another important reason why companies need to be sober about current growth. Global GDP still faces a difficult situation, especially in the euro area, where the GDP trend has been revised down a bit more. Although as one of the BRIC countries, the world has a good expectation on China's GDP, the overall GDP trend of the BRIC countries is still depressing. Moreover, although China is currently in the position of driving the world economy, its economic scale is much smaller than that of the United States, and the engine is smaller. China's economy also risks being dragged down by the world economy.

No matter what the future trend of China and the world economy is, in the situation that the global electronic information industry is in a deep recession, it is no doubt that Chinese PCB enterprises will usher in a new round of development opportunities. After a year of adjustment and development, the most difficult period in China has passed. For PCB enterprises, instead of spending a lot of energy to discuss and predict the future economic environment, it is better to calm down and work hard to strengthen the body. Although this is a cliche, it is the fundamental way to deal with all difficulties.

The overall trend of PCB industry is that the stronger the stronger, the bigger the evergrande. Through the baptism of the crisis, PCB large enterprises at home and abroad will be more competitive, this advantage in the process of economic recovery will be more obvious. At this time, if domestic circuit board enterprises only rely on the help and support of national policies, instead of focusing on the improvement and optimization of their own strength, once the economy fully recovers and the market returns to normal, PCB enterprises will face greater pressure for development, and many small and medium-sized enterprises that can survive the crisis will eventually be unable to escape the fate of disappearing because they cannot adapt to the market environment.

The general manager of Shennan Circuit Youlei also called in the article, PCB enterprises should take advantage of the current opportunity, take advantage of the cost advantage to actively expand the market. After electronic products entered the era of low profit, the global PCB production base gradually shifted from Europe, America and Japan to the Asia-Pacific region dominated by mainland China, Taiwan and South Korea. The outbreak of financial crisis in 2008 accelerated this trend. However, the cost advantage of domestic enterprises has been relatively prominent. If they can accurately seize the opportunity of foreign transfer order, it will greatly help PCB enterprises to expand their market share.

In general, short-term policies aimed at bail-outs often require another round of policies that actually solve real problems, and given Japan's two lost decades of inadequate policies during the 1990 credit crisis, countries will continue to consider how to move from helpful policies to problem-solving policies. Therefore, PCB enterprises should continue to pay attention to the direction of policy and industry development. In the follow-up development, we will pay more attention to the trends of semiconductor, consumer electronics, NB and optoelectronics, etc., to get ready for a new round of development.

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