News and Information

　　Bishop & Associates' survey report shows that since the first half of 2014, the global connector industry has shown strong growth, with annual market sales revenue reaching approximately US\$52.93 billion, an increase of about 8.3% year-on-year. Looking ahead to the new year, industry insiders point out that the mobile terminal market, including smartphones, is still in a stage of rapid development. At the same time, application demand in the industrial field is gradually increasing, which is expected to enable the connector industry to maintain steady growth, and the range of product price declines is also relatively stable.

　　On the other hand, local competition in the connector market is increasingly reflecting global characteristics. Continuously declining prices and outsourcing of production are making the world smaller, and the market is constantly seeking better and more cost-effective solutions. In response to current market supply and demand changes, Daryl Lim, Senior Market Supplier Manager at TTI Asia, summarizes: \"Product innovation is crucial. Products from different manufacturers must have differentiated characteristics, will not be easily replaced, and will 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.\"

　　Miniaturization competition enters 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 industry-recognized important specifications,\" Zheng Xiangyang, general manager of Shenzhen Jiemai Technology Development Co., Ltd., introduced, \"They are: low side height, stacking height (H) less than 1.00mm; shallow depth, connector narrow width less than 3.00mm; small footprint, that is, the end-to-end size of the connector (varies with circuit size); small spacing, center-to-center contact point spacing of 0.40mm or less.\"

　　In this context, the development focus of connector products includes miniaturization of I/O (such as USB and HDMI) connectors, miniaturization of storage card and identity card connectors, smaller spacing of FPC/board-to-board connectors, miniaturization of miniature camera connectors, miniaturization of battery connectors, antenna product integration and miniaturization, etc. As the China agent of TE Connectivity, Jiemai Technology launched a 0.25mm micro-pitch FPC connector (oblique insertion type) product a few years ago, which can arrange the same number of lines on a smaller circuit board; in August 2014, TE further reduced the height of the plug-in Micro-SIM card connector from 1.24mm to 1.18mm to prevent one edge of the Nano-SIM card adapter from possibly touching the contact end of the Micro-SIM card connector, causing the contact to deform and malfunction.

　　JAE Japan Aviation Electronics is a company with 61 years of experience in connector development. In October 2014, the company released the WP21 series board-to-board connectors for miniaturized, thin, and high-density mobile communication products. The spacing is only 0.35mm, the mating height is 0.6mm, and the width is 1.95mm. Based on the previous generation of products, the mounting area can be reduced by 10%, improving design flexibility. Yu Tian Youhiko, General Manager of the Market and Communication Planning Department of JAE Hong Kong Aviation Electronics Co., Ltd., said: \"Driven by the trend of multi-functionalization of mobile communication terminals, the number of components and modules installed inside the equipment has also increased accordingly. This has put increasingly higher demands on small, narrow-pitch board-to-board products and industry standard products. Customers hope to use smaller and thinner (low-height) connectors to save internal space. In terms of board-to-board connectors, market applications are transitioning from 0.4mm pitch products to 0.35mm.\" It is understood that in order to strengthen its support for the Chinese market, in recent years, JAE has established market sales companies in Shanghai, Hong Kong and other places, and has established production plants in Wuxi and Wujiang. In particular, the company has established an R\&D center in Shenzhen to provide manufacturers with product selection and solution design services.

　　When it comes to the main difficulties in the design of compact interconnect solutions, Zhuo Bingkun, Asia Pacific South Regional Director and Market and Key Account Management of Molex, said: \"In space-constrained devices, maintaining a high level of signal and power integrity is crucial. To this end, Molex has used a variety of breakthrough technologies, such as laser direct structuring (LDS), to achieve the production of complex three-dimensional antennas, such as converting three-dimensional designs in the form of CAD data into molded antenna brackets, or directly converting them into device structures.\" At the end of this year, Molex developed a MicroSD/Micro-SIM combination connector. This push-pull combination connector with normal installation method has a height of 2.28mm, combining the functions of the two cards into one, eliminating the need for additional secondary PCB design, saving up to 15% of the overall internal space for mobile devices.