TPCA (Taiwan Printed Circuit Association) releases the production and sales data of 2019 H1. According to statistics, the production value of the Taiwanese cross-strait PCB industry in the first half of 2019 reached NT$ 288.2 billion (around US$9.3 billion). When compared with NT$287.8 billion in 2018 H1, it has a slight growth, and the growth rate hit a record high compared to the same period of the past years. The production value of Taiwanese vendors in Mainland China shares is about 63% and the annual production value of 2019 is expected to reach NT$ 652.8 billion.
     TPCA indicates that although the Sino-US trade war situation remains unclear in 2019 H1 and global smart phones and automotive markets are still in downturn, but benefiting from downstream customers worrying about that the Sino-US trade war will become worse and place orders in advance, it stimulates the sales of products such as ABF substrate and rigid-flex PCB, contributing high growth to these product segments. At the same time, the growth of PC shipments drove the demand of traditional PCB, thus reached a 47.1% growth rate while combining with the rigid-flex PCB, and makes the 2019 H1 Taiwanese cross-strait PCB industry remains at same level of the first half of last year. However, due to the decline in mobile phone shipments, the BT substrate experienced a rather large recession, resulting in the compression of the overall production value of the substrate segment on the first half of the year. The overall growth rate of the substrate segment is -0.2%. Communication products and automotive electronics have been affected by the global economy, and the base period of last year was too high, which led to the decline of FPC and HDI boards by -5.6% and -2.0%, respectively.
      As for the second half of 2019, while bad news still prevails over the good news, there will be a huge challenge for the production value to break through the scale of the same period of last year. There are several key factors including the IMF, OECD, World Bank and other organizations have lowered the global economic growth rate forecast for 2019. It shows that the global economy under the trade disputes of various countries not only affect the export value, but also compresses consumer consumption and corporate investments.  In addition, trade wars detonate the tariff protectionism of all countries and governments expect to reduce the impact of tariff increase by currency depreciation. 
        In 2019, smart phone product is facing the embarrassing old to new product transition period that 4G is terminating but 5G is not ready. The expectation of waiting for 5G products to launch will delay the time for consumers to change their mobile phones. It seems that this wave of products alternates and the waiting period will be longer than was originally expected. There are still many technical thresholds and challenges for vendors to overcome while switching to the production of 5G products, such as high reliability of materials and products. This period is also an important moment for the PCB industry chain to be well-prepared for the new business opportunities of 5G