The annual rankings of the world’s largest PCB fabricators are, once again, dominated by Southeast Asia.

Worldwide printed circuit board output grew 23.8% year-over-year in 2010, fueled by – where else? – China, which grew 37%. Considering the ongoing and near-term expansion taking place in China, the nation’s PCB output will outpace all other regions per Table 1. The 102 largest (by revenue) fabricators produced approximately 80% of the total worldwide output in 2010. As we’ve noted many times, there is a clear trend that the bigger companies grow faster than the smaller ones.

In this annual report, we present a list of world’s top 102 PCB makers in 2010, and discuss their trends by analyzing the data from various angles.

Unlike previous years, we did not separate flexible printed circuit assembly (FPCA) from the totals because it is very difficult to separate the assembly values from the total output of those fabricators. Most large flex circuit fabricators generate a major portion of their revenues from assembly, however.

Also, some major mergers and acquisitions took place during 2010. Regardless of the dates of acquisition, these activities are assumed to have taken place on Jan. 1. Finally, the fiscal years of AT&S and most Japanese fabricators ended on March 31.

Exchange Rates

Exchange rates play a major role in the rankings. Taiwan manufacturers seem to convert their NT dollar-based output to US dollars every month. In this report, the author used “average exchange rates” to convert output in local currencies into US dollars for comparison purposes, as listed in Table 2.

The output reported by some Chinese makers included value-added taxes (VAT), which have been deducted. Moreover, close to 1,500 factories in China are operated by more than 1,100 manufacturers. As the author is not fluent in Chinese, he may have missed some important manufacturers that own multiple factories under different names. Every effort will be made to improve the data through better understanding of Chinese makers. Revenues of some manufacturers such as Foxconn (FAT) are based on calculated guesses, because the company does not break out its revenues. (If you know, please inform the author.)

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