The flowers seem to be blooming like a brocade, but in fact, the fire is cooking oil. "5G has not promoted the domestic PCB industry?

Recently, China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom jointly held an online press conference to release the White Paper on 5G News, which elaborated the core concepts of 5G news.

According to the white paper, 5G messaging services refer to rich media messaging services that need to be upgraded to traditional SMS services, and the widespread popularity of 5G messaging services will bring valuable development opportunities for global operators, industry customers and related industries.

In addition to the most obvious terminal markets such as mobile phones, servers and base stations, 5G will bring opportunities. The PCB industry will benefit a lot in the industrial chain. With the emergence and rapid progress of 5G communication technology, a number of related fields are entering the situation of technology iteration and product application upgrade simultaneously, thus triggering a larger scale of high-end PCB market demand, which can also be seen from the rapid growth of many domestic first-tier manufacturers in recent years.

The performance of several representative enterprises in 2019: Shennan Circuit's net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies during the period of 1.233 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 76.80%; The net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 1.206 billion yuan, up 111.41% year on year; The net profit attributable to the shareholders of the listed company was 303 million yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 12.32%; Shengyi Technology's net profit attributable to shareholders was 1.449 billion yuan, up 44.81% year on year.

However, this is only a small part of the development panorama of PCB industry, which is in the stage of large-scale restructuring and upgrading, and the market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. "Flowers look like a brocade, but fire is cooking oil", this sentence is more suitable for the real portrayal of the development of the domestic PCB industry.

According to industry insiders, since the PCB industry experienced 18, 19 years of environmental protection storm, there have been many small and medium-sized enterprises eliminated; Although the remaining enterprises are facing the demand of 5G, many high value-added circuit boards are still in the stage of technological breakthrough in China at this stage. For example, there are challenges in PCB integration, thermal management and copper-clad materials. Because of this, PCB products produced by domestic PCB manufacturers in the field of 5G are still concentrated in the middle and low-end, and only a few enterprises are able to produce medium-high end products.

In addition, the lack of voice of basic materials is also a major factor limiting the development of high value-added PCB industry in China. It is understood that at present, some basic materials needed by domestic board factories in high value-added PCB are still subject to overseas enterprises, among which in the field of high-frequency plate, Rogers is a dominant situation for a long time. Although domestic enterprises represented by Shengyi Technology continue to strengthen the layout of this field and launch some new materials, it is not the only one to do so. It will obviously take some time to realize the localization of high-frequency materials.

It is worth noting that PCB industry is now not only facing the dividend era of 5G, but also the cold demand of global electronic products market under the impact of the epidemic. Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the purchasing power of the consumer electronics market, typical of smartphones, has been greatly reduced, and the whole industrial chain is going through a big test. Even if the PCB industry benefits from 5G, it will inevitably be affected to some extent.

At present, a few PCB manufacturers have released the first quarter of this year's performance forecast, almost showing a general rise; This is not so much a case of not being affected by the pandemic as of not being affected yet.

An analysis of PCB practitioners pointed out: "The performance of the first quarter of this year did not fluctuate significantly. We believe that first of all, it continues to benefit from the accumulated orders last year. In 2019, the domestic PCB market demand has increased significantly, and many enterprises have full orders. Secondly, the industry has entered the traditional inventory period; Finally, the impact of the overseas outbreak at the end of the first quarter has not yet been reflected in the supply chain. Orders and earnings are not expected to fluctuate much until mid-March. "As the epidemic intensifies overseas, some overseas orders are blocked, and domestic demand is also weak, so the overall order volume of the market will decrease significantly."

The whole mobile phone industry chain is almost in the same situation. It is understood that 5G terminals have been affected more significantly than 4G products, and many mainstream equipment manufacturers have delayed shipments. In this case of reduced demand, enterprise product, customer structure upgrade becomes more and more urgent.

In this regard, the industry also said: "Domestic plate manufacturers are now actively transforming the study of high-density integrated products, but it is also urgent to break the technical barriers of core products. As the cornerstone of the electronics industry, PCB is closely related to many fields. If the company can highlight its own differentiation, we believe that it will have a favorable position in the competition."