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BPA Issues New FPC Report
November 4, 2004 |Estimated reading time: 1 minute
Surrey, U.K.—In their new report, "Flexible and Flex-Rigid Printed Circuits: a Growth Market," BPA shows the key growth areas for flexible printed circuits (FPC) over the next five years will be in mobile phones, display interconnects, digital cameras and PDAs. New applications using flex and flex-rigid substrates in the medical, aerospace and military markets will also emerge; however, BPA predicts that these markets will remain relatively small in comparison to the mobile phone, display and camera markets.
The demand for hard disk drives (HDDs) and optical media drives is also increasing as HDDs and optical pick-up units (OPUs) are used in increasing numbers in consumer portable and audio-visual applications, as well as the computer sector. However, BPA's analysis shows that due to the shrinking in size of the total volume of flex consumed in these applications, this market is not expected to increase significantly.
The costs of flex-rigid printed circuits outweigh the benefits in most portable consumer applications. Discrete flexible circuits and connectors will continue to be used in most mobile phones for the next three to five years. However, many of the Asian producers of flex-rigid substrates are now developing and sampling innovative lower cost technologies that show promise.
The Asian region outside of Japan now produces the largest volumes of FPC, having overtaken Japan for the number one position in 2003. The fastest growing country in Asia is China, who has increased its share of Asian FCP production from 8 percent in the year 2000 to 17 percent in 2003, overtaking Taiwan, Singapore and Korea. China is expected to account for 29 percent of Asian FCP production in 2008.