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Current IssueEngineering Economics
The real cost to manufacture a PCB encompasses everything that goes into making the product: the materials and other value-added supplies, machine and personnel costs, and most importantly, your quality. A hard look at real costs seems wholly appropriate.
Alternate Metallization Processes
Traditional electroless copper and electroless copper immersion gold have been primary PCB plating methods for decades. But alternative plating metals and processes have been introduced over the past few years as miniaturization and advanced packaging continue to develop.
Technology Roadmaps
In this issue of PCB007 Magazine, we discuss technology roadmaps and what they mean for our businesses, providing context to the all-important question: What is my company’s technology roadmap?
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14th Electronic Circuits World Convention
June 20, 2017 | Happy HoldenEstimated reading time: 10 minutes
Figure 3: World electronic equipment monthly shipments, converted at fluctuating exchange rates. (Source: Custer Consulting Group.)
Figure 4 shows the IC end-use markets and growth rates to 2020. Self-driving cars may reach 10 million by 2020. The 5G telecom market is expected to grow to $250B by 2015. This will start with Korea Telecom using 5G for the 2018 Winter Olympics. IoT has $16B worth of installed devices in 2016, and this is expected to grow to $200B by 2023, with nearly 75 billion devices connected by 2020. In the same vein, Figure 5 shows the estimates of wearable devices from 2015 to 2017, in millions. In 2016, there were 17,600 robots in factories (most related to automobiles), 5,100 in electronics assembly and 1,900 in metal fab/foundries. The growth of PCBs is less certain due to the need for more integrated packaging strategies between the chips and the board.
Figure 4: IC end-use systems markets ($B) and growth rates. (Source: IC Insights 12/16.)
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