By Chen Cheng-hui / Staff reporter
The production value of Taiwan’s printed circuit board (PCB) industry increased 19.6 percent year-on-year to NT$245.6 billion (US$7.77 billion) in the first quarter of this year, the highest ever for the same period, the Taiwan Printed Circuit Association (TPCA) said yesterday.The figure includes firms’ production in Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia, which made up 32.3 percent, 63.7 percent and 4 percent of the total, respectively, the association said in a report.Strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers has continued to drive growth in shipments of high-end PCB products, such as integrated circuit (IC) substrates, high-layer count (HLC) boards and high-density interconnect (HDI) boards, the report said.
Semiconductor chips are seen on a printed circuit board in an illustration picture taken on Feb. 17, 2023.
In the first quarter, HLC boards, also known as multilayer boards, accounted for 35.8 percent of the industry’s total shipments, ahead of HDI boards at 22.8 percent, flexible boards at 20 percent and IC substrates at 14.6 percent, it said.The application breakdown for the period showed that products for communications accounted for 28.9 percent of the total, followed by 26.5 percent for computers, 14.6 percent for semiconductors, 13.8 percent for consumer electronics and 9.4 percent for automobiles, it indicated.
