Growing, Growing ... Gone

摘要

2001 was a disaster for almost every PCB manufacturer. Or, perhaps we could say, 2000 was too good. But last year, volume reduction and price erosion affected most companies' performance. Mobile phones and base-stations performed extremely poorly, yet IT infrastructure was hardest hit. Many dot-coms ordered networking equipment far in excess of what was needed, then collapsed, causing a chain reaction among equipment suppliers (Cisco, Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel, Siemens, NEC, and Fujitsu, to name a few). As a result, revenues of their major PCB and EMS suppliers dropped considerably. Demand for small-outline BGA and chip-scale packages, of which five to eight units are used in mobile phones, suffered as well. An estimated 500 million mobile phones were produced in 2000; about 410 million units were sold. The extra 90 million units overflowed into 2001, while demand fell to about 300 million units, resulting in a 40 to 50% reduction in CSP production. The fall also precipitated a 40% plunge in resin-coated foil sales because RCF is primarily used in microvia boards for handsets.