On the development of flexible circuit board

The Guide to Key Fields of High tech Industrialization with Current Priority (2011) mentions that the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Commerce and the Information Property Office have decided to list high-end chip components, high-density multilayer printed circuit boards and flexible circuit boards as one of the current priority areas of information high-tech industrialization. With the continuous promotion of information and intelligent construction, the market demand for flexible circuit boards will be growing.

(1) Mobile phone market. As far as mobile phones are concerned, FPC is mainly used as a part for signal connection of folding, rotating and other parts in mobile phones. At present, more than three pieces of FPC are used in mobile phones. With the popularity of high-performance mobile phones that focus on light, thin, short and small, FPC demand is driven. FPC can be used in mobile phone bending, LCD module, camera module, buttons, side keys, antenna, battery control and other functions. At present, FPC is most widely used in the Hinge Part of mobile phones. The common types are folding, sliding, flip and three-dimensional rotary bodies. Most of them are double-sided or multi-layer FPC designs. FPC has the largest output value in mobile phone applications. The key FPC, camera module, antenna or battery FPC are selectively designed by mobile phone designers. Under the situation that the above selective functions will be gradually incorporated into the standardized design of mobile phones, it will help to increase the use of FPC. According to the 2014 Communication Operation Statistics Bulletin issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in 2014, the number of telephone users in China increased by 39.426 million, reaching 1.536 billion, an increase of 2.6%, down 5 percentage points from the previous year. Among them, the number of mobile phone users increased by 56.98 million, reaching 1.286 billion in total, and the penetration rate of mobile phone users reached 94.5 units/100 people, an increase of 3.7 units/100 people over the previous year. And smartphones dominated by Apple and Android phones have become the first choice of mobile phone users. According to the 2013-2014 Annual General Report on China's Mobile Phone/Smartphone Market Research, the proportion of global smartphone users will exceed one tenth of the global population for the first time in 2015. By 2018, one third of the global consumers will be smartphone users, with a total number of more than 2.56 billion. The smart phone user index in 2018 represents half of the global mobile phone users, which means that functional phones will become a minority in the field of electronic communications. The FPC content of smart phones is higher than that of general electronic products. The smart phones use 5 to 12 pieces of FPC, and 1 to 5 pieces are higher than that of functional phones. The FPC output value of each smart phone is about 2 to 3 times of that of functional phones. Such a huge market is bound to drive the rapid development of related fields. The camera module, antenna, display, USB cable, etc. of smart phones are inseparable from FPC.

(2) Automobile electronic market. Under the trend of automobile electronization, the requirements for high signal transmission and high reliability of vehicle control systems, such as dashboard display, air quality, audio, display, sensor, etc., make FPC begin to show its advantages. Under the trend of precise FPC components, coupled with the three-dimensional structure of the car body, the wiring area is narrow and bent, so using FPC components can better meet the design requirements. According to the data of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2014, China's automobile production and sales increased by 7.26% and 6.86% year on year. The production and sales of passenger cars increased by 10.15% and 9.89% year on year, which is still the main growth force.

(3) Medical monitoring equipment. Over the past ten years, the sales scale of China's medical device market has increased from 17.9 billion yuan in 2001 to 212 billion yuan in 2013. Excluding the impact of price factors, it has increased by 11.84 times in 13 years. According to the sampling survey of the Medical Device Branch of China Medical Materials Association, the sales of medical devices nationwide in 2014 was about 255.6 billion yuan, an increase of 43.6 billion yuan over the previous year's 212 billion yuan, or 20.06%. As the conventional medical equipment of hospitals and other medical institutions, medical monitoring equipment has gradually become widely used by large and medium-sized hospitals. With the rapid development of China's economy, the country has attached great importance to the construction of the grass-roots medical and health system at the county level, township level, community level, etc. Under the joint promotion of internal and external needs such as aging, the second child policy, consumption upgrading, medical reform investment, policy support, and the current domestic overall level is maintained at a low level, the medical monitoring equipment still has considerable room for development, and the development prospect of the domestic medical device industry is worth looking forward to.

To sum up, with the continuous improvement of the society's requirements for information and intelligence, and almost penetrated into all walks of life, as mentioned in the article, it is difficult to find slightly complex electronic products that do not use FPC and FPC components. As the country will further increase the investment in electronic information construction in various fields, the acceleration of electronic information construction in downstream fields will inevitably drive the development of FPC and FPC component industry. At the same time, 4G business has been fully launched nationwide, which will also bring new development opportunities for the flexible printed circuit board industry.