2021/02/24
　　The situation in Japan, where the popularity of the substrate market is spreading, is matched in South Korea, and the main companies that have benefited from this include Simmtech and LG Innotek, which have both seen double-digit growth. After Samsung withdrew from the HDI market, it has opened a revenue gap of about 200 billion KRW, while the revenue of substrate this year has grown by approximately 240 billion KRW. This has helped Samsung to maintain the same revenue scale as that of last year. In addition, Korea Circuit has taken up the market share of HDI that was left behind by Samsung, and this resulted in some growth.  

　　In 2019, leading Korean manufacturers, such as Samsung and LG, announced that they would close the unfavorable, profit-making, HDI business, and instead turned to the development of substrate, saying that substrate will become the focus of future development by Korean board manufacturers. In 2020, the market had a high demand for substrate, which was stimulated by 5G, IoT, and PC related topics. Such intense needs meant that substrate performed outstandingly in the Korean market in 2020, amounting to 60% of the market share. As for the market of rigid boards, flexible boards, and rigid-flex boards, they declined to varying extents, and it is predicted that this trend will continue in 2021.

　　As a whole, Korean manufacturing plants have seen a slight increase (~4%) in revenue in 2020, triggered by the demands for substrate, and it is believed the momentum for substrate will keep growing in 2021. 
     
　　The application and distribution of PCB products in South Korea can be roughly summarized as its technology industry. Take, for instance, the category of mobile phones, which takes up the largest share and clearly reflects the trends in development of the industry when you consider, for example the mobile phone business with Samsung. As the sales of mobile phones slowed down, the proportion of mobile phone applications also dropped by 4.5% in 2020, while still retaining its status as the largest category of application. As for the category of PCs, it has enjoyed the second largest share in the industry and has grown by 4% in 2020. This category has benefited from the increasing demand for DRAM and HPC (high-performance computing) chips. On the other hand, the business of 5G base stations from Samsung itself, has also helped the server category, which has grown in the past year.  Furthermore, it is estimated that server products will grow steadily in the next two to three years, alongside the on-going construction of 5G base stations in South Korea.