From this year onwards, 5G phones will be available on a large scale. As phones transition from non-5G to 5G, the phone motherboard and other components must be compressed to complete the package in a higher density, smaller form, so the phone motherboard, the primary carrier, is bound to be upgraded.

Anylayer HDI is currently selected for flagship Android phones from Huawei and Samsung, while mid-range phones still use first-order and second-order HDI, and OPPO, vivo, and Xiaomi also mostly use second-order HDI; the motherboard is upgraded in the 5G version, and flagship phones from Huawei and Samsung are expected to import SLP, and the order of Anylayer HDI continues to be upgraded, and the second-order HDI of OPPO, vivo , Xiaomi’s second-order HDI is also expected to upgrade to Anylayer HDI; from the price side, the traditional first-order, second-order single price of less than $2, upgrade to Anylayer HDI price is expected to increase to $3-5, while the price of high-order Anylayer HDI and SLP will be higher, so the 5G era Android phone motherboard value is expected to significantly The value of the Android phone motherboard is expected to increase dramatically in the 5G era.

High-priced HDI price increase and domestic substitution double logic

At present, Android low-end and mid-range devices mainly use first-order/second-order HDI, and only high-end devices will use third-order or higher. The higher requirements of 5G phones require fourth-order or higher HDI (fourth-order or higher are basically using Anylayer process), and 5G phones are expected to sink to low- and mid-price models, which shows that Android’s demand for high-end HDI (Anylayer) will grow significantly.

The PCB that accounts for the largest proportion of the total number of PCBs within a mobile device is the HDI, accounting for over 40% of the total. So looking at the consumer electronics trend, it is imperative to upgrade the HDI of the motherboard within the phone as well.

By the simplest method, Guosheng Securities has calculated that the incremental volume of Anylayer due to 5G upgrade on the smartphone side alone will be huge, rising from 100 million in 2019 to about RMB 4.3 billion in 2020.

In addition, high-end HDI products have some demand for TWS headsets, smartwatches, IoT devices, and more.

So whether it’s the original low-end to high-end HDI upgrade or the continued use of Anylayer HDI, it will be a huge demand boost for the entire HDI sub-industry.