Global and China PCB Industry Chain Panorama (Copper Clad Laminate, Copper Foil, Electronic Resin, Electronic Fabric, Special Equipment) Industry Research Report, 2026
PCB: The Core "Skeleton" and "Nerve Center" of Electronic Devices
Printed Circuit Board (PCB) refers to a circuit board that forms copper circuit patterns on a copper-clad laminate according to a predetermined design. It is mainly responsible for the circuit connection of various electronic components, playing the role of electrical connection. It is an indispensable component of most electronic devices and products, and is therefore also known as the "mother of electronic products". It is widely used in fields such as communication electronics, consumer electronics, computers, automotive electronics, industrial control, medical devices, national defense, and aerospace. PCB is not only a basic industry of modern information technology but also the industry with the largest proportion of output value in the global electronic component sub-industry.
PCB Classification: Adapt PCBs with different layers according to circuit complexity
PCBs can be classified into single-sided boards, double-sided boards, and multi-layer boards according to the number of circuit layers. Single-sided boards are the most basic type of PCB, used in basic electronic products such as common household appliances and electronic remote controls; double-sided boards, with the ability to route circuits on both sides, are widely used in consumer electronics, computers, automotive electronics, industrial control, and other fields. Multi-layer boards can be further divided into mid-low layer boards and high layer boards, suitable for relatively complex circuits, among which high layer boards are mainly used in communication equipment, high-end servers, military, and other fields.Meanwhile, based on the flexibility of the substrate material, PCBs can also be classified into three categories: rigid boards, flexible boards, and rigid-flex boards, each with its own unique characteristics and application scenarios.
PCB Industry Chain: A Complete Ecosystem from Basic Materials to High-End Applications
The PCB industry chain is closely linked and highly coordinated. The upstream mainly consists of core raw materials such as electrolytic copper foil, electronic-grade glass fiber Fabric, and epoxy resin, along with key auxiliary materials such as dry film, prepreg, ink, and chemical solutions. The midstream focuses on the core manufacturing and process steps of PCB, which involve multiple complex processes such as copper-clad laminate cutting, circuit imaging and etching, precision drilling, lamination, solder mask and silk screen printing, and electrical testing, ultimately producing diversified PCB products such as rigid boards, flexible boards, rigid-flex boards, and HDI boards. Downstream application scenarios are extremely extensive, ranging from core technology fields such as computers, semiconductors, and communication devices, to consumer electronics such as smartphones and home appliances, automotive electronics such as new energy vehicles and automotive radars in people's livelihood fields, and further to precision and high-end fields such as industrial control, high-end medical devices, and even aerospace and military, all of which rely on the support of PCBs, comprehensively enabling the intelligent and miniaturized development of various industries.
PCB Market Size: Explosive Demand Drives Rapid Market Growth
The global PCB industry is showing an accelerating growth trend. The market demand for the global PCB industry will further expand, and the future capacity expansion plans and equipment replacement needs of major PCB vendors will greatly promote the progress and development of the PCB industrial chain. In 2024, the global PCB output value reached 73.56 billion US dollars, and the CAGR of the global PCB output value from 2010 to 2023 reached 2.2%. It is expected that by 2029, driven by the communication and consumer electronics sectors, the global PCB output value will increase to 94.66 billion US dollars, with CAGR of 4.3% in 2024-2030.
China's PCB industry continues to lead the world with resilient growth. Benefiting from the continuous shift of PCB industry capacity to China and the strong growth in demand from downstream sectors such as communications, computers, consumer electronics, automotive electronics, industrial control and medical, aerospace, etc., the growth rate of China's PCB industry has generally been higher than the global level in recent years. As the world's largest PCB production base, China's PCB output value reached as high as $43.84 billion in 2022. During the period from 2010 to 2022, the CAGR of China's PCB output value reached 6.6%, far exceeding the global average growth rate. It is projected that by 2028, China's PCB output value will further climb to $46.47 billion, with a projected CAGR of 4.2% during the period of 2023-2028. Currently, the development of China's PCB market is stable, and its growth rate is expected to be basically on par with the global growth rate in the future.
From the perspective of the competitive landscape, in 2024, Zhen Ding Technology ranked first globally with revenue of $5.34 billion, followed by Unimicron Technology and Dongshan Precision, with revenues of $3.59 billion and $3.41 billion respectively. Among the top ten vendors, mainland Chinese vendors occupied 3 seats, and Taiwanese vendors occupied 5 seats.
Trend 1: Embedded process breaks through the bottleneck of power semiconductor packaging, achieving high integration and efficient heat dissipation
Embedded PCB technology embeds passive components and power chips into the board through three-dimensional integration and semiconductor-level processes, significantly enhancing system performance and integration, and overcoming issues such as heat dissipation in the application of wide-bandgap semiconductors in traditional packaging. There are mainly three mainstream processes for manufacturing embedded PCB power devices: Chip-on-Substrate, Chip-in-Cavity, and Double-side Microvia technologies.
Different from conventional PCB manufacturing, embedded power chip technology has extremely high requirements for the production environment, necessitating the introduction of IC semiconductor processes and the provision of high-performance machines and processes. Cleanroom requirements and ESD compliance have become basic prerequisites, and the entire production line needs to ensure non-destructive handling, which makes the factory no longer a traditional PCB factory but more like a semiconductor packaging manufacturing plant, reflecting the deep integration of PCB technology and packaging technology.
Trend 2: IC substrates are the core material for chip packaging, and China's vast market is accelerating domestic substitution
IC substrate is the base plate that carries IC chips, playing a role in protecting bare chips and connecting them to the outside world. As the core material for chip packaging, IC substrate features high density, high precision, high performance, thinness, and lightness. Compared with ordinary PCBs, IC packaging substrates have higher requirements for multiple technical parameters such as board thickness, line width/line spacing, and manufacturing processes, representing the highest manufacturing technology level in the PCB industry.Currently, manufacturers in regions such as Taiwan, China, South Korea, and Japan dominate the global IC substrate market, with leading manufacturers focusing mainly on high-end products such as FC-BGA/ABF packaging substrates. Domestic IC substrate manufacturers, on the other hand, focus on products with lower added value such as FC-CSP and BT packaging substrates, still showing a significant gap. However, considering the leading position of domestic packaging manufacturers in the industry, the need for self-reliance and controllability in the supply chain, as well as the catalytic effect of future demand for chips in fields such as AI, industrial intelligence, and intelligent driving, the progress of domestic substitution of IC packaging substrates is expected to accelerate, and the domestic IC substrate market has broad prospects.
Trend 3: HDI is gradually becoming the mainstream in the AI era, with its output value gradually increasing
With the development of modern electronic products towards miniaturization, thinness, and lightness, as well as the increasing requirements for circuit density and routing complexity due to chip performance upgrades, the demand for HDI (High Density Interconnect) is constantly being catalyzed. HDI, which stands for High Density Interconnect, is a type of circuit board with relatively high circuit distribution density that uses micro blind and buried via technology. Different from traditional multi-layer boards that are only connected through through-holes, HDI can also be connected through micro blind vias or buried blind vias in different internal layers, so its wiring density is also relatively higher. Currently, the mainstream process for HDI manufacturing is mainly the build-up method, which involves building up layers on both sides of the middle core board layer by layer, and then forming via holes through laser drilling for interlayer connection. The number of build-up layers corresponds to the order of HDI. With the rapid development of AI technology, HDI, with its high-density wiring, high heat dissipation efficiency, and good signal transmission performance, has gradually become the mainstream PCB technology type for AI servers. Moreover, HDI is evolving towards higher orders and finer line densities, and its value has also increased accordingly. Industrial chain enterprises with advantages in the HDI field have also achieved rapid growth in performance through this.Currently, domestic vendors represented by Shenghong Technology, relying on their technological and production capacity advantages, are continuously narrowing the gap in market share with overseas HDI vendors, and their industry status is steadily improving.
Vendor Dynamics (1): WUS Group Invests $300 Million to Develop High-Density Optoelectronic Integrated Circuit Boards
WUS Group plans to invest $300 million to launch the "High-Density Optoelectronic Integrated Circuit Board Project". According to the introduction, the "High-Density Optoelectronic Integrated Circuit Board Project" is planned to invest in the establishment of a Wholly-Owned Subsidiary in Jintan District, Changzhou City, build an incubation platform for cutting-edge technologies such as CoWoP and advanced processes such as mSAP, construct a closed-loop system of "R&D - Pilot - Verification - Application", lay out next-generation technology directions such as optical-copper integration, systematically enhance the signal transmission, power distribution, and functional integration capabilities of products, and after the relevant technical processes are verified to be mature and meet the industrialization conditions, invest in the construction of a large-scale production line for high-density optoelectronic integrated circuit boards.
CoWoP (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Platform PCB) is the next-generation packaging solution. Simply put, CoWoP technology is "CoWoS minus the packaging substrate", which means that after combining the silicon die with the silicon interposer, it is directly bonded to the enhanced-designed motherboard (Platform PCB), eliminating the traditional packaging substrate and BGA steps, forming an integrated structure of "chip-silicon interposer-PCB", achieving a thinner, lighter, and higher-bandwidth module design, while fully leveraging the high productivity and mature processes of large-size PCB production lines.
To achieve large-scale mass production of CoWoP, the key lies in the process that breaks through the precision limitations of traditional circuits—mSAP (Modified Semi-Additive Process), an advanced printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing process, which is mainly applied to the advanced manufacturing technologies of substrate-like printed circuit boards (SLP) and BT substrates.Different from conventional processes that rely on subtractive etching, mSAP adopts an "additive-subtractive" approach: first, a layer of ultra-thin copper is coated on the substrate, then the circuit area is defined through photolithography, selectively electroplated for thickening, and finally the unnecessary thin copper layer is removed to form a fine circuit structure. Compared with traditional PCB processes, this process can achieve smaller line width/space (L/S), maintain high yield and excellent impedance consistency on large-area substrates, thereby meeting the stringent requirements of AI/HPC applications for high-speed signal transmission.
Vendor Dynamics(2): WUS Group Announces Breakthrough in M9 Hybrid Lamination Process
WUS Group announced on January 11, 2026, on the Interactive Easy Platform of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange that it has successfully mastered the hybrid pressing process of M9-grade high-speed materials and conventional materials. This technological breakthrough marks that China's high-end PCB manufacturing has entered the global leading level, and will provide core support for the upgrade of computing power infrastructure such as AI servers.
M9 material is currently the top-grade high-speed copper-clad laminate (CCL) material, specifically designed for 800G/1.6T ultra-high-speed transmission. Its core advantage lies in its extremely low dielectric loss (Df) (≤0.003), which can significantly reduce signal attenuation during transmission. Compared with previous-generation materials, M9 has achieved a qualitative leap in signal loss, thermal stability, and dielectric properties, comparable to an upgrade from a "green train" to a "high-speed rail".
Hybrid lamination process: On the same PCB board, the high-performance but costly M9 material is skillfully combined with conventional materials - using M9 to "pave the high-speed road" in critical areas and conventional materials to control costs in ordinary areas.
Technical challenges: The physical properties of different materials, such as thermal expansion coefficient, contraction rate, and pressing temperature, vary greatly, making it as difficult to perfectly integrate them on a single circuit board as to make people with very different personalities live in harmony. WUS Group successfully overcame this challenge thanks to its profound technical accumulation.
Latest Progress: WUS Group has passed NVIDIA's 78-layer M9-level orthogonal backplane certification, aiming to capture 50% of NVIDIA's orthogonal backplane market share.
Global and China PCB Industry Chain Panorama (Copper Clad Laminate, Copper Foil, Electronic Resin, Electronic Fabric, Special Equipment) Industry Research Report, 2026
PCB: The Core "Skeleton" and "Nerve Center" of Electronic Devices
Printed Circuit Board (PCB) refers to a circuit board that forms copper circuit patterns on a copper-clad laminate according to a pre...
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