The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the global economy. However, thanks to their unique market position and manufacturing capabilities, the Taiwan and China-based cross-strait PCB makers achieved good results in 2020. Increasing demands for 5G infrastructure, cloud data centers and high-performance computing led to stronger growth momentum. These market forces are creating an increase in demand and interest in printed circuit boards (PCB), in particular high-end multi-layer boards (MLB), high density interconnect (HDI) PCBs and flexible PCBs (FPCB).We met up with Pierce Weng, General Manager of Orbotech PCB Taiwan, to talk about the company's new process-enabling solutions for FPCB manufacturing. For 40 years, Orbotech, a KLA company, has been developing advanced yield enhancement solutions for the manufacturing of electronics. Through its long-time partnership with Taiwanese and Chinese PCB makers, Orbotech has enabled the electronics manufacturing service industry to maintain its leading global position.Orbotech Infinitum and Orbotech Apeiron series provide a big boost for FPCB manufacturingFlex circuits are widely used in almost all popular electronic products, especially smartphones, tablets and notebooks. 2020 was a bumper year for flex manufacturing and FPCB makers had to respond quickly in order to meet the strong demand. To help its customers achieve their business objectives, Orbotech has announced two new roll-to-roll (R2R) products for FPCB manufacturing. The solutions are for roll-to-roll direct imaging (DI) and UV laser drilling. Both overcome many of the yield, throughput and quality challenges inherent in flex material manufacturing. Leveraging newly developed and field-proven technologies, the solutions facilitate high quality, cost-effective mass production of the ultra-thin FPCB boards that are critical in new generations of advanced electronics.The first solution is the Orbotech Infinitum series - a roll-to-roll direct imaging solution for mass production of FPCBs. Leveraging Orbotech's new DDI Technology (Drum Direct Imaging ) for optimal material handling and high-speed imaging, the systems deliver high yield and production throughput. The Orbotech Infinitum delivers fine line structure and uniformity enabled by continuous exposure and high depth-of-focus (DoF) with Orbotech's LSO Technology (Large Scan Optics Technology). The systems are compatible with a wide range of resists and processes enabled by simultaneous multi-wave exposure thanks to Orbotech's MultiWave Technology. The two models named Orbotech Infinitum 10 and Orbotech Infinitum 10XT both offer maximum efficiency and cleanliness with options for roll widths of 260mm and up to 520mm.The next solution is the Orbotech Apeiron series. A powerful UV laser drilling system for flex roll-to-roll and sheet-by-sheet drilling, it delivers high drilling throughput, quality and accuracy. Using Multi-Path Technology, its precise laser beam and four large scan area drilling heads can drill in four locations simultaneously, optimizing laser power usage. Its small footprint design leverages its internal roll-to-roll mechanism, enabled by the new Roll-Inside Technology. The third technology driving this innovative solution is Orbotech's CBU Technology (Continuous Beam Uniformity) that provides built-in beam validation tools to ensure beam accuracy and quality for size, roundness and energy distribution. Orbotech Apeiron offers both roll-to-roll and sheet-by-sheet handling of thin flex cores with the ability to simultaneously drill two panel sheets, side by side for maximum drilling capacity.Based on its experience and expertise as well as its close partnerships with PCB makers, Orbotech has developed a wide range of solutions designed specifically to meet the demanding requirements of FPCB and advanced HDI PCBs. Orbotech offers an entire suite of solutions for mass production including DI (Direct Imaging), AOI (Automated Optical Inspection) and AOS (Automated Optical Shaping) - the 3D shaping of opens, shorts and nicks. Orbotech's product offering is in great demand from PCB makers. With its announcement of the Orbotech Infinitum and Orbotech Apeiron series, Orbotech continues to maintain its market leadership as it optimizes the handling of the most delicate flex materials during direct imaging and UV laser drilling processes.Taiwan PCB makers see optimistic outlook in 2021With the year finally coming to an end, Mr. Weng reviewed the business development of 2020 in PCB sectors. 5G smartphones did not meet their forecasts during the early months of 2020, mainly because the global brands' flagship models were postponed. But mid-end and entry level lower price phones took a major step up in volumes and maintained an overall upward trend for the mobile phone market. Meanwhile, some leading investments for 6G technology have been initiated. This will contribute to higher-end process equipment and manufacturing solutions and increase demand for Orbotech's wide range of innovative solutions and product offerings.In addition to mobile phone PCB sectors, HDI boards were one of the fastest growing technologies during 2020. With the widespread adoption of 5G base stations worldwide and major Taiwan PCB makers enjoying robust orders for notebooks, tablets and PC servers, HDI PCB makers are showing strong growth. Successful manufacturing of HDI and multi-layer PCBs have thinner lines, tighter spacing, tighter annular rings and use thinner specialty materials. First tier PCB makers are working in close collaboration with Orbotech's engineering teams developing special equipment including laser drills, laser direct imaging and sequential lamination process solutions. In order to successfully produce this type of board, it requires additional time and a significant CAPEX investment in manufacturing processes and equipment.Pierce Weng, GM of Orbotech PCB Taiwan, gives upbeat sales forecast on high-end PCB process enabling solutions

Some public cloud platform operators have recently launched QaaS (Quantum as a Service) business, seeking synergies between software and hardware suppliers and enterprise users - a move which will help explore potential applications and accelerate the integration of new and old computing technologies, according to Digitimes Research.Major public cloud service providers, including IBM, Microsoft and AWS (Amazon Web Services), have successfully launched QaaS, allowing enterprise users to access quantum computing resources on public cloud platforms.This business model allows quantum computing technology providers to solicit more customers and meets the needs of enterprise users for high-speeding computing services, which is favorable to the quantum computing industry's development.The growing deployments of QaaS services and related ecosystems by these public cloud service providers also mean that commercialization of quantum computing has arrived, according to Digitimes Research.As a feasible solution for accelerated data computing in the post-Moore's Law era, quantum computing is not replacing traditional computing processes but is optimizing the high-speed computing performance of the old and new computing technologies, Digitimes Research notes.While most quantum computers are still being operated in highly constrained environments, the availability of QaaS in the form of remote access has helped alleviate the scarcity of quantum computing resources.

The US trade ban may be blocking SMIC from advancing its semiconductor manufacturing processes, but the China foundry is looking to expand its presence in the mature node segments amid industry-wide tight capacity. Qualcomm reporedly has had to extend lead times for its mobile chips. Also in short supply have been Nvidia's RTX 30 series discrete graphics cards, which have been keenly sought after by cryptocurrency miners. Now cryptominers are turning to RTX 30-equiped gaming notebooks to serve their mining purposes.SMIC to enhance presence in mature process segment: Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) is looking to further grow its mature process business segment, after receiving US licenses to import equipment and materials for use in mature-node processes, according to industry sources.Qualcomm chip supply reportedly tight: Qualcomm reportedly has extended the delivery lead times for its mobile chips as the global semiconductor supply chain remains under pressure amid tight capacity, according to industry sources.Gaming notebook suppliers see surge in demand from cryptominers: Gaming notebook specialists have seen demand surge for cryptocurrency mining applications, according to industry sources.

About 795.7 million smartphone application processors will be shipped to China-based handset vendors in 2021, up 12.2% on year, forecasts Digitimes Research.Demand for smartphone-use APs in China is increasing as vendors including Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo are building up inventories aiming to ramp up their market share at the expense of Huawei, whose spun-off sub-brand Honor is also stepping up its AP purchases due to its low inventory level.The supply of smartphone APs and other chips such as power management (PWM) ICs will remain tight in the first half of 2021 due to tight capacity at 8- and 12-inch fabs.However, the tight supply may ease in the second half thanks to capacity expansion and improving yield rates at foundry houses. And some handset vendors are likely to adjust their AP inventories in the latter half of the year.Digitimes Research estimates that APs for 4G smartphones will remain the mainstream of shipments to China in 2021, accounting for over 50% of total shipments.In the second half of 2021, the ratio of APs built using 4/5nm nodes will reach 7% of all AP shipments, and 5nm products will be the majority in the 4/5nm segment.China will continue to be the largest outlet for 5G APs in 2021, taking up 56% of the global total, with Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung Electronics being the top-3 vendors.Both Qualcomm and MediaTek will see their market share increase significantly in the year, with the former enjoying a higher growth rate.

TSMC is giving priority to expanding its 12-inch fab capacity to ease supply. Now clients stand a better chance of having their orders squeezed into TSMC's production schedule in the second quarter of 2021. Taiwan's inductor makers are also keen on expanding production capacity to meet robust demand from the autmotive and handset sectors. Global smartphone shipments are expected to grow almost 50% in first-quarter 2021, according to Digitimes Research.TSMC prioritizes 12-inch fab expansion: TSMC has prioritized expanding 12-inch fabs over 8-inch ones, and it may be easier for the foundry house to squeeze in extra orders from some clients its 12-inch fabs in the second quarter, according to industry sources.Taiwan inductor makers keen on capacity expansions: Taiwan makers of inductors are keenly enforcing capacity expansions to meet increasingly strong demand for automotive, handset and other consumer electronics applications, according to industry sources.Global smartphone shipments to grow 50% in 1Q21: Global smartphone shipments are likely to grow nearly 50% on year to 340 million units in the first quarter of 2021, driven by robust sales of Apple's iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone Pro Max as well as a ramp-up in shipments by Chinese brands to grab the market share relinquished by Huawei, according to Digitimes Research.

With its advantages in edge computing and mobile device applications, Arm has been expanding its server solution offerings, heading towards high performance computing instead of staying on the traditional route of further lowering power consumption, according to Digitimes Research's observation.Adoption by cloud computing datacenter operators such as Amazon and Microsoft as well as chip designers including Marvell and Ampere is expected to help Arm expand its presence in the large-size cloud datacenter and HPC markets, enabling it to obtain a 10% market share in the server CPU market.Arm-based servers are attractive particularly to large-size cloud computing datacenter operators with Amazon being the keenest in procuring the products, since Arm-based architecture, comparing to x86 one, feature lower cost and lower power consumption.Large-size cloud computing operators have been expanding their datacenter infrastructure in a bid to satisfy increasing demand for cloud computing services, AI and HPC applications and therefore have rigid demand for lowering hardware expenses and power consumption. Arm-based CPUs will allow the operators to provide services with high price/performance ratios and more flexible combinations.However, to survive in the server market, Arm still faces many difficulties: it lacks support from the software ecosystem; related server motherboard and rack system design are not yet mature; and there is fierce competition from other open-source camps such as RSIC-V.Digitimes Research expects Arm to focus on expanding in the cloud computing datacenter and HPC server markets. If Nvidia is able to complete the acquisition of Arm, the GPU giant will then be able to offer server solutions that combine Arm CPU and Nvidia GPU that will expand Arm's reach in the AI cloud computing market.

Global smartphone shipments are likely to grow nearly 50% on year to 340 million units in the first quarter of 2021, driven by robust sales of Apple's iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone Pro Max as well as a ramp-up in shipments by Chinese brands to grab the market share relinquished by Huawei, according to Digitimes Research. Apple's iPhone shipments are expected to total over 60 million units in first-quarter 2021, having seen such shipments reach over 90 million units a quarter earlier, Digitimes Research estimates.Apple is likely to be the top vendor for a six-month period that ends March 31, 2021, with total shipments of over 150 million units, up 38% from the same period of a year earlier.Samsung Electronics will rank second and see its shipments decline slightly in the six months, or roughly 60-65 million units each for fourth-quarter 2020 and first-quarter 2021.Xiaomi will be in third place with its shipments totaling 90 million units in the six months, representing an increase of over 80% from a year earlier.Huawei will ship less than 20 million smartphones to be in sixth place in the first quarter of 2021. Global shipments of 5G-enabled phones are expected to reach over 600 million units in 2021 compared to 280 million units shipped a year earlier, Digitimes Research estimates.Huawei, Apple and Samsung were the top-three 5G phone vendors in 2020, accounting for over 70% of global 5G phone shipments.Digitimes Research also revises upward the annual growth of global smartphone shipments for 2021 to 10-13% for a total of over 1.4 billion units.

In the first half of 2020, the automotive industry took a hard hit from COVID-19 with demand nosediving, production shutdowns and allocation shifts focusing on telecommunications and industrial automation. As a result, sales went down a whopping 34%.By the end of the year, demand for automobiles began to mend as sales improved by 19%. Though this is lower than previous years, some car manufacturers have already started to see the effects of this rebound and are predicting sales to reach that of 2019 - one of the best years in the industry.Despite the automotive industry expecting to see explosive growth, its recovery is already being hindered by widespread electronic component shortages that are predicted to last until 2023. A dominating factor is the limited supply of raw materials, such as glass substrates, 8-inch wafers and ABF substrates, that are causing production and global supply to continue to narrow.The most common affected automotive components include MCUs, MLCCs, resistors, DRAM and FLASH memory, LPDDR4s, accelerometers, converters, regulators and MOSFETs. In response, many automotive electronics suppliers, including NXP, Renesas and Microchip, announced price increases and extended lead times. For example, NXP's lead times have increased to 52 weeks for its automotive MCUs.With foundry capacities experiencing a 100% utilization rate, the automotive industry is competing with telecommunications and consumer electronics for limited supply. As a result, automakers like Volkswagen, Nissan and Toyota, are cutting production and idling plants.As 2021 progresses, more shortages are on the horizon, including LPPDR5s used in automotive applications, SSDs used in electric vehicle applications, and precious metals, which are needed for catalytic converters. The impact of the current shortages is exponential. General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co., for instance, are potentially facing $61 billion in lost revenue for the year due to difficulty securing needed chips.Due to its effect on the industry, automakers are looking to their governments for support. This has led the U.S., Japanese and German governments to ask Taiwanese officials for aid in convincing TSMC to re-prioritize its capacity and focus on automotive-grade parts. The European Union has also approached Taipei for support. In response, TSMC announced its plan to reallocate its wafer capacity to pump out auto-related products as it works toward increasing production capacity altogether.Because of the time and resources required to expand capacity, not all manufacturers are following in TSMC's footsteps. Infineon and Renesas have stated they will adjust production based on demand with no specific plans while NXP has not shown any indication of increasing its capacity.Unfortunately, the situation could get worse if semiconductor manufacturers forecast based on immediate need only. The growing demand for electric vehicles and autonomous capabilities will require twice as many semiconductors as internal combustion engine automobiles."In order to fulfill their needs, automotive manufacturers are starting to approve multiple manufacturer part numbers for certain builds and are incorporating VMI programs with various suppliers," states Jair Cruger, Fusion Worldwide's Purchasing Director, EMEA.As the automotive evolution progresses, automakers are focusing on further integrating technology in automobiles like Bluetooth connectivity, driver assistance, navigation and hybrid electric systems, which require more chips and components. This is trend is expected to continue because of growing demand for big data and analytics, cloud computing and digital services to increase vehicle connectivity with owners and dealers - all of which will also add pressure to limited component supply.With over 40% of the cost of a new car attributing to semiconductor-based chips and the demand of semiconductors in other sectors also growing, the global market is expected to be worth $129 billion in 2025 - triple the size it was in 2019."Increased competition for technology allocation will mean that automakers have to plan even further ahead and think more strategically to ensure their supply chains are stable," Cruger continues.This overlap between both the automotive and technology industries will result in bottleneck allocation issues in semiconductor products for technology manufacturers. Simultaneously, automakers will require a complete overhaul of their vertical supply chains to rely on strategic partnering with specialty technology firms."To prepare supply chains for the massive growth, having an accurate forecast, keeping enough buffer stock and planning inventory for at least 6 months to a year will be key. By doing so, companies will be better prepared for lead time stretches and other unpredicted events," says Dylan Chew, Fusion Worldwide's Global Director of Purchasing.Additionally, by incorporating multiple sources into supply chains and strategically utilizing the open market, companies will have multiple opportunities to cover their supply chains. As we have learned over the past few years, companies who put all their eggs in one basket don't have a safety net when supply chain disruptions occur.

TSMC is fast expanding capacity for 5nm process to meet strong demand from a host of heavyweight clients, including Apple, AMD and MediaTek. The foundry house's capacity for 5nm process is expected hike by one third in second-half 2021 compared to that in the last quarter of 2020. MediaTek has also obtained more capacity support from TSMC for chip production at 6nm and 7nm to facilitate its 5G chip shipments. Meanwhile, ODM Wistron and Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom have teamed up eyeing the 5G and AI services sectors.TSMC 5nm process capacity to top 120,000 wafers monthly in 2H21: TSMC is poised to scale up its 5nm process manufacturing capacity to 105,000 wafers monthly in the first half of 2021, up from 90,000 units in fourth-quarter 2020, with plans to further expand the process capacity to 120,000 units in the second half of this year, according to industry sources.MediaTek wins more TSMC support to boost 5G chip shipments: MediaTek has obtained sufficient 6nm and 7nm process capacity at TSMC, which will allow the mobile SoC specialist to boost its 5G chip shipments in 2021, according to industry sources.Wistron, Chunghwa Telecom team up to tap 5G, AI service sectors: Wistron Group has forged a strategic alliance with Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) to jointly tap business opportunities arising from proliferating 5G and AI applications.

IC manufacturing capacity has been tight, resulting in chip shortages that some expect to last into 2020. Shortages amid strong demand are sending product prices up - one of those being MOSFET whose suppliers are set to hike pricing sharply in the months ahead. Demand for passive components is expected to remain strong through second-half 2021, with currently inventory at ODMs and distributors dropping to very low levels. Chip shortage likely to persist through 2022, says Silicon Motion: Foundry and backend capacity constraints resulting in a global shortage of semiconductors will likely persist through 2022, according to Silicon Motion Technology, a Taiwan-based NAND flash device controller specialist.MOSFET prices poised to rise on worsening shortages: Prices for MOSFET chips are set to rise significantly in the months ahead thanks to worsening shortages arising from persistently tight 8-inch foundry capacity and rapid increases in demand for graphics cards and automotive electronics applications, according to industry sources.Passive component makers see clear order visibility stretch into 2H21: Yageo and Walsin Technology have seen their visibility of orders for MLCCs, chip resistors, inductors and capacitors extend to the second half of 2021 thanks to ODMs and distributors strengthening order momentum to replenish their inventories, according to industry sources.