According to Fleck Research, the number of connectors produced in China accounts for 34% of the world's demand. This article starts from analyzing the characteristics and product structure of China's connector market, points out the technological development trend of the connector industry in the future and forecasts the market trend.

In 2001, the global connector market showed a negative growth of 18.9%, and its total output value fell from 31.6 billion US dollars in 2000 to 25.6 billion US dollars in 2001. In the slump in the world connector market, the Chinese market is still the only one. According to Fleck research company data, in 2001, the number of connectors produced in China reached 34% of the world's demand. Among the connector manufacturers in the market, in addition to local enterprises, enterprises in Taiwan, China accounted for 37.5%, and European and American enterprises accounted for 14.1%. With China's entry into the WTO, more and more international companies will move to China for production. This means that there will be more choices for Chinese connector users. This article starts from analyzing the characteristics and product structure of China's connector market, points out the technological development trend of the connector industry in the future and forecasts the market trend. It is expected that in the future, chip connectors, optical fiber connectors, IEEE1394 and USB2.0 high-speed connectors, wired broadband connectors and fine-pitch connectors for various portable/wireless products will be the most popular products.

Chinese market characteristics

In recent years, due to the rapid development of the upstream industry of connectors, the 3C industry and data transmission business including computers, communication products and consumer electronics have great potential for development in China. In 2000, the size of China's connector market reached 7.25 billion. Yuan, an increase of 25.9% compared with 1999, in 2001 due to the influence of the international market, an increase of only 9.1% compared with 2000. Since 2002, the output of China's consumer electronics, optical communications, and network equipment products has grown rapidly, driving the development of the connector industry. At the same time, foreign and Taiwanese connector companies have invested and set up factories in China, which has rapidly expanded the scale of connector production and reduced foreign imports. The resulting scale effect has also reduced the manufacturing cost of connectors.

At present, there are about 600 enterprises engaged in connector production or processing in China. State-owned connector enterprises are generally not very large in scale, while private joint-stock enterprises and joint ventures are getting bigger and bigger. The investment increases every year and quickly occupies the Large share of the Chinese ancillary market. State-owned connector enterprises are generally small in scale, and 85% of them have less than 500 employees. China's labor-intensive products, such as wire harnesses, end pieces, micro switches, power cords, and plug jacks, have certain advantages in the international market.

By comparing the data in Table 1 and Table 2, it can be found that China's connector industry has the following characteristics:

(1) Due to the large scale of China's electronic information industry, the demand for the connector market is also at the forefront of the world. In 2001, when the world's electronic information industry was sluggish, the output still maintained a growth of 5.3%, and in 2002 there was an accelerated development. situation;

(2) The share of production of foreign-funded enterprises has gradually increased, thereby promoting the continuous increase in export volume;

(3) In terms of quantity and quality, the connectors produced in China still cannot meet the needs of China's electronic information product manufacturing, and some high-end products still rely on imports from abroad. The import and export trade of connectors is in deficit, but with overseas connectors The manufacturing center moved to the mainland, and the trade deficit gradually decreased.

Product structure

The market structure of various connector products in 2001 is shown in Table 3. Specifically, strip connectors occupy the mainstream position in the market, with an output of 1.53 billion in 2001, accounting for 31.5% of the total output.

Among the various connectors, it is particularly worth mentioning the optical fiber cable connector. In the past few years, due to China's vigorous development of the cable TV network, the optical connector was generally in short supply. After 1998, due to the increase in the production scale of enterprises and the demand The weakening of the trend, the supply and demand situation turned. Regarding the future development trend of China's optical fiber connectors, it can be described as "volume increase and price decrease". In the past three years, the annual growth rate is generally estimated to be around 10%.

Another main development direction of connectors is the connectors for mobile phones. At present, the production of mobile phones in China is developing rapidly, and the demand for connectors is correspondingly strong. However, as a new field, Chinese manufacturers are in terms of technical strength and production experience. , there are still great deficiencies.

Surface mount connectors are mainly used in mobile phones. Each mobile phone needs one RF board connector and one battery connector, and about 6 other connectors, a total of about 8, and the total price is about 8-12 yuan. Products in the Chinese market are mainly produced by Chinese Taiwanese and Japanese companies. The demand for mobile phone connectors in China is shown in Table 4.

In addition, due to the strong domestic and foreign market demand, China's PCB connector industry is also showing a rapid development trend. With the emergence of many joint ventures, China is expected to become a world-class manufacturing center for PCB connectors. The market demand for PCB connectors in Japan and Hong Kong has dropped by 10-13% recently. However, industry insiders believe that the PCB connector industry is still promising and is expected to recover in the next few months, with an increase in demand of 30%. Driven by the market in communications, IT and consumer electronics, China's PCB connector industry has shown a strong growth momentum. At present, there are more than 200 PCB connector companies in China, mainly located in Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Sichuan and Fujian and other provinces and cities. . In 2001, China's PCB connector output reached 60 million, and its growth rate in 2002 is expected to reach 50%.

At present, the main export target markets of China's PCB connectors are Europe, America and Southeast Asia. Although these regions are affected by the economic crisis, Chinese PCB connector manufacturers still have confidence in the export situation in 2002, and the export growth rate is expected to reach 30%. about.

A/V connectors are used in consumer electronics, communications, and computer products. The prosperity of these industries has driven the continuous growth of demand for A/V connectors. Its main application areas are VCD, DVD, and MP3 players, TV, and notebook computers. and PDAs, the demand for digital A/V connectors for these products will grow further.

There are about 500 A/V connector manufacturers in China, and the new manufacturers are mainly joint ventures invested by Hong Kong or Taiwan. The development momentum of China's A/V connector industry mainly comes from the rapid development of consumer electronics, communications and PC products. In 2001, due to the oversupply of the consumer electronics industry, the production reached the bottom, resulting in a slump in the connector industry. In 2001, the demand for A/V connectors in China was 160 million.

The A/V connector market is now rapidly shifting from analog to digital, with major applications in computers, TVs, VCDs, DVDs, camcorders, game consoles and speakers. From January to June 2002, the output of color TVs and DVD players increased by 36.5% and 21.6% respectively, which strongly boosted the growth of the A/V connector market.

Application field comparison

All electrical-related products require connectors, and the connector market is widely used. Table 5 shows the proportion of connectors in the Chinese market in different application fields in 2001.

Among the different fields of connectors, computers account for the largest proportion, at 43%. Connectors used in communication products account for 20%. In the next 5 years, high-speed connectors (such as 2.5Gbps and 5.0Gbps connectors), wireless product connectors (mobile phones, base stations, wireless local area networks), optical fiber connectors, wired broadband connectors, fine pitch connectors (1.27mm /1.0mm/0.8mm/0.5mm/0.4mm/0.3mm) and other five parts grew the fastest. The international average growth rate is 22.9%, which is the most outstanding performance. It is also the product project that international manufacturers TYCO/AMP, Amphenol, Molex and FCI have invested the most attention in.

Market forecast

In the next five years, China's electronic information product market will still maintain a growth rate of 15-30%. The general trend is that new growth points will release the impetus to the industry over time, and the base of the industry scale will become larger and larger, so The growth rate gradually slowed down.

The forecast results show that in 2005, China's connector market sales will reach 14.58 billion yuan, ranking among the top three in the world. The demand forecast of various connector market segments is shown in Table 9.

In general, the demand for business and home data communication will be strong in the future, the market for various optical communication equipment is broad, and fiber optic connectors can maintain an annual growth rate of no less than 30%. The maturity of the home optical network market in 2005 will continue enlarge. Another promising product is the chip connector. Due to meeting the requirements of product miniaturization and low cost, the proportion of chip connectors will gradually increase in the future, and it will be widely used in various handheld and small electronic products. The market of strip, PCB and RF connectors basically closely follows the overall market development of electronic information products, and lags slightly.

Technology development direction

With the vigorous development of various computers, mobile communications, notebook computers and PDA products, miniaturization, high density and high transmission speed have become the development trend of connectors. In order to meet the needs of market development and increase their market share, various connector manufacturers around the world have successively launched their own new products. Among them, small-pitch/miniature connectors for substrates, high-speed signal transmission connectors, memory stick connectors and connectors for digital equipment are the products they focus on developing.

1. Small pitch/miniature connector

At present, the appearance of the whole product using connectors is a combination of miniaturization, thinning and high performance, which also promotes the development of connector products in the direction of miniaturization and small pitch. At present, among the board-to-board connector products, various manufacturing companies have begun to mass-produce 0.5mm chip connectors. In mobile information terminal products, various manufacturing companies have also begun to mass-produce more miniaturized 0.4mm narrow-blade connector products. In electronic products such as notebook computers and PDAs, FDC connectors are mostly used. In this field, the application fields of FDC connector products with a pitch of 0.3mm to 0.5mm will be more extensive.

2. High-speed transmission connector

Since the connector is mainly used for signal transmission, if the efficiency can be improved, it will better meet the needs of information products and multimedia products. USB and IEEE1394 are the two mainstream high-speed transmission in the market.

USB is a unified standard connector jointly formulated by PC and communication industry manufacturers such as Intel, Microsoft, NEC, IBM and HP. It can connect up to 127 computers. The maximum transmission speed of USB1.1 is 12Mbps, which has broken through the D-Sub connector. Its related products can be connected to low-speed devices such as keyboards, mice, printers, etc., and are relatively common products on the market, and now USB2.0 has been developed, with a maximum transmission speed of 480Mbps, which has the effect of fueling the development of information multimedia.

IEEE1394 was first proposed by Apple and became an official standard for transmission in 1995. Its biggest feature is that it can support peer-to-peer transmission (Peer to Peer), which means that the main body of the transmission does not need to pass through a PC, and the transmission speed can be as high as 100Mbps to 100Mbps. 3.2Gbps, so almost all devices that require high frequency and high speed use the IEEE1934 standard, such as digital TV, DVC, and high-pixel digital cameras. Since both USB and IEEE1394 have different market demands, the future development should be the coexistence of both.

Memory stick connector

The use of memory stick connectors in electronic products such as digital cameras and mobile phones has greatly expanded. At present, the latest product that has attracted much attention from users is the SD memory stick connector.

Connector for digital equipment

Electronic products such as notebook computers are increasingly using high-precision LCD displays. To this end, the SX-GA type LCD connector suitable for this high-precision LCD display has been officially launched. In addition, DVI connectors for digital displays such as liquid crystal displays are also favored by users.

In addition to the above products, the market demand for optical fiber transmission connectors for WDM and DWDM and small coaxial connectors related to wireless LAN is also gradually expanding.

In general, China is the country with the greatest development potential in the connector market, but due to the low starting point of production and development of China's connector industry, weak development and innovation capabilities, serious lagging behind in new technology products, product technical performance, production process technology, etc. In contrast, there is still a gap of about 5-10 years, and a large amount of demand depends on imports. At present, Chinese enterprises mainly focus on mid-to-low-end products, chip connectors and miniature high-speed connectors with market development potential, and few companies can produce them. For example, China's optical fiber connector manufacturers mainly use imported or domestic components for assembly, which requires small investment and simple process. There are more than 60 enterprises producing them. The supply of products exceeds the demand and the competition is fierce. Looking forward to China's connector market in the future, only by accelerating the process of technological innovation and establishing a good institutional foundation can Chinese enterprises catch up and occupy a place in the competition.