Home > News > Industry News

PCB has become a popular product line in the era of 5G

2020-05-12

PCB (printed circuit board) is an industry with a relatively low technological threshold. However, 5G communication has the characteristics of high frequency and high speed. Therefore, 5G PCB needs higher technology and higher industrial threshold. Meanwhile, the output value has also been pulled higher. The industry believes that the PCB value of 5G large base stations is about three times that of 4G base stations.

A50f4bfbfbedab64b3f3e2faf2e20ac578311e65. JPG

The global deployment of 5G base stations has been accelerated since 2019, marking the first year of the 5G era. In the new era, the rapid rise in the demand for communication base stations, with flourishing industrial chain of related parts, PCB industrial chain is one of the red Fried chicken.

The construction of 5G base station drives the demand of PCB

Research institutions Prismark preliminary estimates that in 2019 most of the PCB used in varying degrees in the field of recession, but production servers and data storage field showed an increase of 3.1%, to $4.97 billion, on the other hand the cable infrastructure and wireless infrastructure to rise higher, grew at 6.2% and 7.1% respectively, the amount of $4.67 billion and $2.612 billion.

Prismark believes that the 5G era will stimulate the demand for communication PCB, which is mainly composed of 8-16 layers of multi-layer board and super-high-rise board with more than 8 layers. It is estimated that the annual compound growth rate will reach 6.5% and 8.8% respectively from 2019 to 2024.

In terms of domestic demand in China, China's ministry of industry and information technology estimates that in 2019, the number of 5G base stations in China has exceeded 130,000, with 1.72 million new 4G base stations, and the total number of 4G base stations reaching 5.44 million.

Chinese telecom operators believe that there are 1.2 to 1.5 times as many large 5G base stations in China as there are large 4G base stations. Compared with the number of base stations of one million in the era of 4G, the scale of large and small base stations of 5G will exceed ten million.

It is difficult to produce 5G PCB, which raises the industrial threshold

PCB communication board for 5G should conform to the characteristics of high frequency and high speed, so there are higher requirements for multi-layer high-speed PCB board and metal substrate, etc. It is generally believed in the industry that the price of 5G single base station PCB is greatly increased, and the value of each large base station PCB is about three times that of 4G base station.

The characteristics of high frequency, high speed, large feet and multi-layer make PCB not only rely on increasing the input of raw materials to complete the end demand. To print these high frequency and high speed circuits, the production line not only needs high technology and equipment investment, but also needs the experience of technicians and production personnel. Meanwhile, the client certification procedures are strict and tedious.

At present, the average yield rate of PCB products of 5G base station in China is less than 95%, but the high technology also increases the industrial threshold in a disguised way, which can prolong the production and operation cycle of relevant enterprises.

Besides PCB, 5G also increases the demand for data computing and storage

At the same time, with the gradual maturity of 5G technology, the data transmission traffic will show an explosive growth, and the demand for storage and computing will also increase significantly. IDC estimates that the global data transmission volume will increase by more than five times by 2018 to 2025, and the growth rate of the Chinese market is even higher than the global average, which will increase by about six times. In 2018, China's top three telecom operators accounted for 51.6% of China's data center market, and it can be said that these telecom operators have the largest demand for China's data centers.

So far, the 5g-related investment budgets of China's three major telecom operators have soared to 180.3 billion yuan this year, an increase of more than 300 percent compared with 2019. With the improvement of the market expectation for the construction of base stations, it is estimated that the construction of 5G base stations is expected to exceed 800,000 this year according to the second year of the 4G construction cycle, and the relevant equipment suppliers, including huawei, zte, Ericsson, nokia, China xinke, etc., will be the first to benefit.

Looking to the upstream PCB industry, the industry pointed out that the orders in the base station have been arranged until June, and some of the Q1 orders have been extended to Q2. In addition, after "unblocking", China's three major telecom companies began to actively call for tenders. Currently, the total scale of bidding is about 480,000 base stations, and the procurement volume of 5G wireless network equipment of China mobile phase ii is far beyond the market expectation, which reflects the future boom of PCB 5G hardboard demand.