The shortage of IC board capacity may continue until 2024 when manufacturers expand production, which will boost the equipment market.

In the past two years, the rapid development of mobile terminals, 5G communications, data center construction, artificial intelligence and automotive electronics has promoted the continuous evolution of wafer manufacturing technology. While the market side puts forward higher requirements for wafer integration and various performance, it also rapidly increases the demand for high-performance IC board.

The shortage of production capacity will last until 2024.

Daniel Securities said that with regard to the BT carrier board, driven by orders from Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek and other customers for the use of processor (AP), memory, SiP and AiP modules for mobile phones, carrier board manufacturers are preparing for initial and larger planned mass production in the second half of this year, but the factory in northern Taiwan of Xinxing Electronics was damaged by fire and will not resume production until 2022, so the demand for BT substrate will still be too much for the whole of 2021. BT substrate manufacturers have increased their quotations by 5-15% so far this year, and it remains to be seen whether there will be a new round of price increases in the second half of the year. Order visibility is now available in November, better than in the previous 1-2 months.

As for the ABF board, some suppliers have concluded production capacity contracts with customers for 2023. Japan Yifei Electric believes that driven by the trend of working from home, the demand for PC and tablets has exceeded expectations, and has flooded into inquiry orders that are more than 30% higher than the production capacity, more than twice as much as before the outbreak, and may not be able to meet the order demand for the whole of this year.

Industry insiders pointed out that as 5G is only in the accelerated development stage, many applications or services have not yet been popularized, such as the Internet of things, the Internet of vehicles, Al artificial intelligence, and so on. Although large manufacturers have expanded production in recent years, they still can not catch up with the rapid growth of terminal demand, and do not rule out the fact that the gap of the carrier plate is actually larger than the market expected, so it is believed that the imbalance between supply and demand of the carrier plate can be lengthened to see 2024.

Due to the strong market demand for IC board, the plate factory began to step up horsepower expansion, if the capacity gap continues to 2024 can not be met, it is expected that Taiwan board Sanxiong Nandian, Jingshuo, Xingxing, as well as in the board industry to catch up with the triumphant-KY, in the new capacity and customer support, will be the beneficiaries of the board shortage wave.

At present, the market share of domestic enterprises is less than 5%, and most of them are concentrated in low-end markets such as MEMS, considering that the storage board market alone can account for 20-30% of the total board market. With the continuous introduction of Changshou / Changxin and other manufacturers, Shennan circuit / Xingsen technology is expected to be released. In addition, domestic enterprises are also expected to gradually enter a higher proportion of the high-end board market.

Nandian said that the IC board supply tight trend is clear, order visibility is also stretching, such as BT board see the end of the year, ABF board many have seen next year, comprehensive customer demand, industry expansion and other conditions, the board is clear to 2023 or tight supply and demand, but ABF board application increases rapidly, it does not rule out the view that production capacity is still in short supply after 2023.

According to Nandian's analysis, due to the continuous upgrading of product specifications, the applications are becoming more and more diverse, such as the servers and laptops of the two major CPU factories. In the past, there were a lot of 10 material numbers, but now they all need hundreds. In addition, in order to meet the characteristics of high-frequency, high-speed and high-efficiency computing, the number of layers becomes thicker and the area increases, so it consumes a lot of production capacity. In addition, the needs of each customer are different, and the size / layer number / design is also different. Customization continues to expand production and production, so in recent years, the capacity of the carrier plate has been tight and not easy to ease.

In recent years, Zhending has a strong catch-up power in IC board. In addition to its continuous scale, it will also officially join the battlefield of ABF board in 2023. The company said that processors or chips such as CPU and GPU are all places where IC board is needed. Now the main common applications are still in mobile phones, tablets, computers and other products. In fact, the really huge demand has not yet broken out, such as the Internet of things, the Internet of vehicles, and so on. For example, electric cars have just started. When it comes to the self-driving stage in the future, the high-performance Al chip needed will further stimulate the expansion of ABF demand, so it is optimistic that the future growth momentum of IC board is very considerable.

The equipment factory is stained with light.

Benefiting from the strong demand for production expansion of the carrier plate factory, the shipment of related equipment has been booming, and the industry is optimistic about the operation of many equipment factories, such as Mude, Zhisheng, a large number of, Qunyi, Xunde, Yangbo, cusp, Kovac, and so on.

In response to the continuous shortage of board production capacity, Taiwan board factories have actively increased their capacity expansion in recent years. Nandian has expanded its production capacity in Kunshan Plant, Jinxing Plant and Forest Plant respectively from 2021 to 2023; Xinxing has a new Waxberry Plant and Guangxin Plant, and Shanying Plant has also carried board capacity in the reconstruction part; Jingshuo has expanded production this year with ABF and BT, and new capacity of Waxberry Plant will be added in the second half of 2022. Zhending plans to add contribution to the new capacity of Qinhuangdao BT board in the third quarter of 2022, and Shenzhen ABF board is expected to open new production capacity in 2023.

Equipment industry said that since 2020, the carrier board, soft board, HDI, traditional hard board and so on, there are companies to expand production, but the imbalance between supply and demand of IC board is the most obvious, focusing on 5G, Internet of things, self-driving and other business opportunities will gradually break out in the future, IC board demand is growing steadily, so it is the focus of the equipment factory to keep up with the capital expenditure and production expansion plan of the board factory.

Some people in the industry also mentioned that the equipment demand of the carrier plate factory is constantly heating up. in addition to the production expansion plans announced by the major manufacturers, there are also rumors in the market that the future demand of customers to lock in the carrier plate is still a substantial growth trend. do not rule out the existing production expansion plan, hope that the board factory will increase its plant or increase its production capacity.

In addition, the transformation and upgrading of the old factory building of the carrier plate factory can also be tracked continuously. after all, building a carrier plate factory requires a large amount of investment. if we replace the old equipment with new ones, we can get through the bottleneck to improve the production yield and efficiency, and also contribute to the increase of production capacity.

People in the industry pointed out that in order to meet the characteristics of 5G high-frequency, high-speed and big data transmission, PCB design is developing towards high thickness, thin lines, and porous numbers, especially like carrier plates. In response to the complex functions of wafers, larger area and thicker layers, and drilling as a rigid demand, the demand for laser and mechanical drilling by large PCB manufacturers at home and abroad is not decreasing but increasing. It is expected that in the future, under the trend of 5G, Internet of things, Internet of vehicles, electric cars, self-driving and so on, Long-term demand continues to be bullish.