At present, after decades of development, my country's PCB industry has formed a group of enterprises with strong competitiveness. By strengthening technology research and development, improving product quality, strengthening management capabilities, and cultivating professional talents, leading companies in the industry have formed a certain degree of competitive advantage. The market share will gradually increase, and the PCB industry barriers will become more obvious.

PCB industry market size

In recent years, my country has continuously introduced foreign advanced technology and equipment to develop the PCB industry. The output value of the PCB industry has grown rapidly and has become a global PCB manufacturing center. The data shows that the output value of my country's PCB industry has increased from US$29.73 billion in 2017 to US$34.8 billion in 2020, with an average annual compound growth rate of 5.4%, which is higher than the global average growth level. In the future, the PCB industry is expected to maintain a relatively high growth rate. It is expected that my country's PCB industry will reach US$38.15 billion in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 4.92%.

PCB industry barriers

1. Barriers to technology research and development

The PCB special equipment industry is characterized by technology-intensive characteristics, involving knowledge in mechanical design, electrical engineering, electronic technology, optoelectronics and laser technology, automatic control technology, computer software and other disciplines. Factors such as aperture size, line width and line spacing, production scale, reliability requirements, and customer requirements require the company to have rich technical reserves and a large number of R&D talents. In addition, product assembly is an important part of the manufacturing process, and there is a great demand for professional assembly personnel with deep qualifications and rich assembly experience. Due to the lack of effective research and control of forward-looking technologies, and the shortage of professional and technical personnel, new entrants face large barriers to technology research and development.

2. Customer Barriers

PCB manufacturers have extremely high requirements on the quality of PCB boards. If the PCB equipment has processing defects, it may lead to the scrapping of the entire PCB board, which will bring great losses to customers. In order to ensure product quality and the safety and stability of the supply chain, PCB manufacturers, especially large manufacturers, generally carry out strict certification of PCB equipment. Once the equipment supplier is determined, it will not be easily replaced. constitutes a large barrier to entry.

3. Barriers to Management Ability

The PCB production process involves multiple processes, and the corresponding production equipment for different processes is quite different. In order to better serve customers and improve the efficiency of collaboration between equipment, enterprises need to have a high level of comprehensive technology and craftsmanship. In order to respond to the diversified needs of customers in a timely manner, the company needs to build a highly flexible production management system, which requires reasonable planning in material supply, personnel scheduling and production, and requires long-term experience accumulation, which constitutes a certain barrier for new entrants.

4. Financial barriers

The PCB special equipment industry is a capital-intensive industry. On the one hand, it requires a lot of R&D investment and personnel training. On the other hand, the equipment delivery and payment cycle is long, and it occupies a lot of working capital. New entrants need a large-scale financial support to enter. this industry.