According to the survey report of Bishop & Associates, since the first half of 2014, the global connector industry has shown a strong growth momentum. The annual market sales revenue is about 52.93 billion US dollars, an increase of about 8.3% compared with the same period of the previous year. Looking forward to the new year, some people in the industry pointed out that the mobile terminal market such as smart phones is still in a stage of rapid development, and at the same time, the application demand in the industrial field is gradually increasing, which makes the connector industry expected to continue to maintain steady growth and decline in product prices. The range is also relatively stable.

On the other hand, the local competition in the connector market increasingly reflects the characteristics of globalization. The declining price constraints and the form of production outsourcing have made the world smaller and smaller, and the market has been looking for better and more efficient products. Cost effective solution. In response to the current changes in market supply and demand, Daryl Lim, senior market supplier manager of TTI Asia, summed up: "Product innovation is very important. Products of different manufacturers must have differentiated characteristics, cannot be easily replaced, and become smaller and more cost-effective; in addition, it is necessary to ensure that products can be quickly introduced into production from the design stage. ”

The miniaturization competition has entered the 0.01mm level

For connector manufacturers, the first challenge is how to make the size of the connector smaller. "Taking mobile electronic products as an example, when connecting two small PCBs, there are four important specifications recognized by the industry," said Zheng Xiangyang, general manager of Shenzhen Zimmer Technology Development Co., Ltd., "they are: Low side height, stack height (H) is less than 1.00mm; shallow depth, the narrow width of the connector is less than 3.00mm; small footprint, that is, the connector end-to-end size (varies with circuit size); small spacing, center-to-center The center contact point spacing is 0.40mm or less. ”

In this context, the development focus of connector products includes the miniaturization of I/O (such as USB and HDMI) connectors, the miniaturization of memory card and ID card connectors, the smaller pitch of FPC/substrate-to-substrate connectors, Micro camera connector miniaturization, battery connector miniaturization, antenna product integration and miniaturization, etc. As the Chinese agent of TE Connectivity, Zimmer Technology has launched a 0.25mm micro-pitch FPC connector (oblique type) a few years ago, which can arrange the same number of lines on a smaller circuit board; August 2014 , TE has again lowered the height of the pluggable Micro-SIM card connector from 1.24mm to 1.18mm to prevent an edge of the Nano-SIM card adapter from touching the contact end of the Micro-SIM card connector, resulting in The contacts are deformed and cannot function properly.

JAE Japan Avionics is a company with 61 years of connector development experience. In October 2014, the company released the WP21 series board-to-board connectors for miniaturized, thin and high-density mobile communication products, with a pitch of only 0.35mm, the fitting height is 0.6mm, and the width is 1.95mm, which can reduce the mounting area by 10% on the basis of the previous generation product and improve the degree of freedom of design. Yutian Yuyan, general manager of the Marketing and Communication Planning Department of JAE Hong Kong Avionics Co., Ltd., said: "Due to the multi-functional trend of mobile communication terminals, the number of components and modules inside the equipment has also increased accordingly. The requirements for products and industry standards are getting higher and higher, and customers want to use smaller, thinner (low height) connectors to save internal space. Products with mm pitch transition to 0.35mm. ”It is understood that in order to strengthen support for the Chinese market, in recent years, JAE has established marketing companies in Shanghai, Hong Kong and other places, and established production plants in Wuxi and Wujiang, especially the company established R&D in Shenzhen The center can provide manufacturers with product selection, program design and other services.

Talking about the main difficulties in the design of compact interconnect solutions, Bingkun Zhuo, director of Molex Asia Pacific South and Marketing and Key Account Manager, said: "In space-constrained equipment, keeping the signal and power relatively high A high level of integrity is critical. To this end, Molex uses a variety of breakthrough technologies such as Laser Direct Structuring (LDS) to enable the production of complex 3D antennas, such as converting 3D designs in the form of CAD data into formed antenna supports, or directly into device structures . ” At the end of this year, Molex developed a MicroSD/Micro-SIM combination connector. The height of this push-pull combination connector in a normal installation method is 2.28mm, which combines the functions of the two cards into one, without the need for Using an additional secondary PCB design saves up to 15% of the overall internal space for mobile devices.