Printed Circuit Design & Fab - September 2008 - (Page 28)

PCB Fab MarkEtS The nTi $100 miLLion cLuB The record shows long-term growth is best achieved by continued aggressive investment. by DR. HAyAO NAKAHARA Market research is something like playing poker with wild cards: You know the unexpected is coming, but you never know when or where. To put it another way, if it's not one anomaly, it's another. The research for the latest NTI 100 (actually, 98 fabricators made this year’s list) began in the third quarter of 2007. Many PCB fabricators were helpful in providing accurate data, but others did not respond to the requests for information. Therefore, some amount of deduction was unavoidable in compiling this market overview and company-specific information. That’s wild card No. 1. Then there’s the twist of the flexible printed circuit players. It is becoming very difficult, if not impossible, to correctly assess the revenues of FPC makers because so many prominent fabricators are now engaged largely in FPC “Jisso” activities or assembly. Depending on the assembly complexity, the bare board portion of the total value ranges from 30% to 85% and there is no average figure that can be applied. Therefore, this year, the author incorporated the total revenue – including assembled FPC – for all FPC makers. This does distort the entire revenue picture. However, the intent of this work is not to give an exact revenues review for all top fabricators, that should be considered when reviewing the PCB fabricator rankings (tablE 1). Volatile exchange rates make it difficult to rank international PCB fabricators accurately. Non-US fabricators that have facilities overseas account for that output in local currencies and then convert the value into US dollars. The author then converts the consolidated output data into US consolidated output data into an average exchange rate of US dollars. When the gap is only a few million dollars between two closely contested fabricators, this procedure can place one company over another simply based on currency exchange. Therefore, a certain number of errors are unavoidable. However, the Top 98 reveals a very interesting trend. The author has highlighted only certain points of interest, the final judgment is left to the readers’ imagination. Monthly exchange rates of major PCB-producing countries were tracked throughout the last year, then each 28 nation’s totals were divided by 12 to determine the “average” exchange rates. Those values were used in the revenue calculations. The world exchange rates have changed drastically since the beginning of 2007 due to the weakening US dollar. The fall has been caused by many factors, including sub-prime mortgage problems and rising inflation. If the current exchange rates persist, the 2008 NTI list will change drastically, based simply on the currency exchange. It seems evident that some of the Japanese fabricators will have revenue exceeding $2 billion based on exchange rates combined with organic growth. We shall see, one year from today, what the extended impact of the devaluation of the US dollar has on the positions of PCB fabricators in a global economy. Several fabricators that were previously ranked failed to make the 2007 cut. Some were ranked inadvertently due to the author’s errors. Daisho-Microline is one such fabricator; Marua Manufacturing of Japan is another. Innovex’s revenues fell to about $80 million after its North America plants were shuttered and production moved to Thailand. Casio Micronics also ended with about $80 million. Its flex business was recently purchased by Hitachi Cable. Aspocomp nosedived–it sold its plant in China and property in Chennai, India, (and the right to build a PWB plant) to Hong Kong’s Meadville Technology Group in a complicated deal. South tablE 1. Currency Exchange Rates 2007 average € = $1.37 1US$ = JPY 114 = KRW 930 = NT$ 32.5 = RMB 7.3 = GBP 0.50 = HKD 7.8 July 2008 $1.57 JPY107 KRW 1026 NT$ 30.4 RMB 6.86 GBP 0.50 HKD 7.8 SEPTEMBER 2008 printEd CirCuit dESign & fAB

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Printed Circuit Design & Fab - September 2008

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - August 2008 Contents Our Line Market Watch Around the World Happenings ROI Positive Plating Off the Shelf Marketplace Ad Index EMC for the Real World Final Finish Forum Design for Green: Laminates A Systematic Approach to Increasing Layer Count The NTI $100 Million Club Printable Nanocomposites BGA Bulletin

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - September 2008

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