LEATHERHEAD, SURREY, UK -- Printed circuit board sales in China will grow 5.5% compounded annually through 2017, while sales in the US and Europe will stall, says a new report from BPA Consulting. 

Collectively, the US and European markets will be flat, growing 0.2% and falling 0.2 %, respectively, through 2017, BPA says. CHina will continue to carry the industry, with a production CAAGR of 6.2 %. Sales overall will 33.2bn by 2017.

For laminate demand for China by 2017 we see this reaching an annual demand of 375 million sq meters. 

 BPA's model relies on growth rates to forecast the near- and medium-term prospects. That model includes semiconductors, which are in many instances aproximately 25% the value of an electronics assembly. By contrast, the bare board is typically 2 to 8% of the cost of the electronics assembly, or higher for some custom boards used in military and medical applications.

Figure 1 (at right) shows the forecasted growth in demand for semiconductors.The cycle is approximately four to 4.5 years, as seen in Figure 1, with significant troughs in 2001, 2005, 2009 and again for 2013-14. Most would not have seen this last trough as a downturn (as is the case for 2005), BPA says. In these years the industry experienced slowing in the growth rate rather than a large contraction, as in 2001 and 2009. 

The shape of the cycle influences the growth rates and it can be seen from Figure 1 that the deeper the trough, the higher the peak will be when growth resumes. Conversely, the shallower the trough, the lower the peak. Such a characteristic would be indicative of what would be considered a more stable period than the boom-to-bust period seen between the late 1990s and 2012. On that basis, BPA forecasts more stable growth through 2017.

Other indicators include electronics equipment production trends. Figure 2 (below) shows the trend for China, which indicates a potential uptick in China in 2016-17, due mainly to the previously identified cyclical nature of the industry.