PALO ALTO, CA – The flex circuit market was worth some $7.3 billion in 2007 and will reach $16.4 billion in 2014, says research firm Frost & Sullivan.

Innovative demands from various end-user verticals including telecommunications, automotive, aerospace and defense, medical, and industrial packaging expect to fuel robust growth in the flexible printed circuit board market. The compliant nature of flex circuits makes it useful in dynamic motion products, and its development dramatically alter the landscape of the PCB market. Flex has also become the technology of choice for advance packaging, which includes both multichip and 3-D, says Frost.

“The physical advantages of flexible circuits are projected to be the primary factors that increase demand in the years to come, as FCP becomes the enabling technology to achieve desired size, shape, weight, or functionality in an electronic device,” says Frost research analyst Ashwin T Ananthakrishnan. “With high density interconnection becoming more mainstream, it is anticipated that the growth of flexible circuits would also be hastened.”

Over 35 companies vie for the global market space, which makes for high competition in the flexible PCB market. Most of the Asian manufacturers play a dominant role in the market. Japan, South Korea and North America have all established a global presence and lay claim to a wide variety of products, says Frost. Smaller participants operate either regionally or locally with a limited product portfolio, restricting the competition to foreign-owned manufacturers for high-end FPCs.

“Japan is the largest contributor to the FPC board market, but confines high-technology PCBs in-house, while outsourcing only known technologies to low-cost regions,” notes Ananthakrishnan. “The lack of experience of FPC manufacturing outside Japan impedes the development of FPCs in other geographic regions.”