FPC: Emerging Blue Ocean for Automotive Electronics

FPC (Flexible Printed Circuit) is a flexible printed circuit board, referred to as a flexible board. It is made of flexible copper clad laminate (FCCL) and soft insulating layer after being attached with adhesive (glue).

Compared with traditional PCB rigid boards, it has significant advantages such as high production efficiency, high wiring density, light weight, thin thickness, foldable bending, and three-dimensional wiring, it is more in line with the trend of intelligence, portability, and thinning in the downstream electronics industry, and is suitable for electronic products that require miniaturization, light weight, and mobility.

According to Prismark data, the global FPC market will grow from US$14.1 billion to US$17.2 billion in 2021-2026, with a CAGR of 4.1%.

The downstream of the FPC industry chain is for various applications, including display/touch modules, fingerprint recognition modules, camera modules, etc.The end applications include consumer electronics, communication equipment, automotive electronics, industrial control medical, aerospace and other fields.

From the downstream point of view, smart phone function innovation and large-capacity batteries compress the internal space, and the consumption of FPC single machine increases, and the high growth of wearable devices increases the usage of FPC. The rapid growth of AR/VR has opened up new scenarios for FPCB applications, and the electrification and intelligence of automobiles have brought about a substantial increase in the value of FPC bicycles.