Despite the slow recovery of the global economy, the global output value of circuit boards of Taiwanese enterprises still demonstrated steady growth in the third quarter. The total output value at home and abroad reached NT$227.1 billion, with an annual increase of 9.6% and a quarterly increase of 19.0%. The growth in this quarter was mainly driven by the peak season effect, the mild recovery of mainstream terminal products, as well as the specification upgrades of AI infrastructure (such as servers and network communication equipment) and the boost from the low-orbit satellite market.

　　Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, affected by the lower-than-expected sales of Apple mobile phones and the uncertainty of the international situation, there is a strong wait-and-see sentiment in the market. Terminal and downstream enterprises remain conservative in stocking, and the overall growth momentum is restricted. It is expected that the global output value of Taiwanese enterprises in the fourth quarter will reach NT$209 billion, a slight decline of 1.2% compared with the same period last year. However, the estimated total output value in 2024 will still reach NT$808.3 billion, an increase of 5.0% compared with last year.

　　The year 2024 is regarded as the beginning of the development of AI to the Edge side. The improvement of the performance on the Edge side will reduce the dependence on the cloud. With the specification upgrades of the AI Edge side in 2025, more circuit board manufacturers will benefit. In addition, the alleviation of inflationary pressure is expected to promote global consumer spending to be better than that in 2024. Overall, the global production scale of circuit boards of Taiwanese enterprises will continue to expand at a growth rate of 5.7% in 2025, with a total output value reaching NT$854.1 billion.

　　In the third quarter of 2024, the scale of the application market of Taiwanese PCB was mainly distributed among communications (37.0%), computers (21.8%), semiconductors (17.7%), automobiles (11.4%), consumer electronics (8.0%) and others (4.1%). Among them, the semiconductor sector witnessed the most prominent growth, driven by the demand for AI chips and high-bandwidth memory HBM. The output value of communication products continued to increase due to the demand for network communication products extended by low-orbit satellites and AI servers. Although the sales in the PC market were lower than expected, the demand for AI servers and general servers supported the growth of the output value in the computer application category. Affected by the rapid inventory replenishment in the previous two years, combined with weakened demand and the base effect, the growth momentum of the automobile industry weakened quarter by quarter. Meanwhile, as consumer spending has not yet increased significantly, the performance of consumer products remained sluggish.

　　In terms of PCB products, multilayer boards (30.1%), flexible boards (24.3%), HDI boards (19.6%) and IC substrates (17.7%) accounted for a relatively large proportion. Among them, the demand for IC substrates remained strong, the same as in the above semiconductor applications. Driven by the demand for servers, ADAS for high-frequency applications and low-orbit satellites, HDI boards also showed good growth. Multilayer boards still took AI as the main growth engine, and the network communication products required for the extension of infrastructure drove the growth of the specifications and demand for multilayer boards due to the upgrading of the architecture or the increase in usage. In contrast, the performance of flexible boards was relatively weak in this quarter.

　　After the U.S. presidential election, the world is paying attention to the impact of Trump's new policies on the global electronics manufacturing industry. Although the impact of policies is still unclear so far, it is estimated that his "America First" proposition will use tariff barriers to prompt the return of manufacturing industries and job opportunities to the United States and may take a tougher stance towards the Chinese mainland to reduce trade dependence. Therefore, the scale and speed of overseas expansion of electronics components factories may shift from conservative to active, and EMS and component supply chains will attach greater importance to investment in the United States. For Taiwanese PCB enterprises, orders are still mainly from American customers. Although the share of manufacturing in the Chinese mainland still exceeds 60%, Taiwanese factories continue to invest in advanced manufacturing processes. Meanwhile, with the new production capacities in Southeast Asia coming into operation one after another in 2025, it is expected to reduce geopolitical risks and continue to benefit from the U.S. demand for sensitive terminal products.

　　In conclusion, observing the overall performance of Taiwanese PCB factories in the first three quarters of 2024, under the complex situation of geopolitics and competition among peers, although the growth of sales volume of mainstream terminal products has slowed down, suppressing the growth of the overall output value, there is still growth momentum concentrated on a few application products, reflecting that some Taiwanese factories have demonstrated their strength in the high-end market. Facing the future expansion of the influence of their counterparts on the Chinese mainland, the importance of the transformation of the Taiwanese PCB industry chain is further highlighted. It requires the upstream and downstream of the industry chain to work together to jointly create the next golden era for Taiwanese factories.