Taiwan's major HDI board makers including Compeq Manufacturing, Tripod Technology and Unimicron Technology will see strong shipment momentum persist into the second half of the year, with their order visibility clear through the third quarter, according to industry sources.

It will become a long-term trend for HDI boards to grow in both their scope of applications and demand, which will enable suppliers to sustain sales increases in coming years, the sources said.

Apart from mounting penetration in consumer electronics, HDI PCB with its trait of low loss in signal transmission is increasingly adopted for automotive, networking and server applications, the sources noted, adding that HDI mainboard demand for handsets will remain in high gear in the short term as the main growth engine for makers.

Compeq and Unimicron now see HDI mainboards for handset applications top their HDI PCB shipments but are also ramping up shipment ratios for non-handset applications. Tripod is focusing more on developing non-consumer applications such as memory modules and automotive electronics, and its ratio of shipments to the handset segment has declined over the past year, the sources noted.

Compeq has reported its first-quarter 2021 revenues rose 10.9% on year reaching NT$13.408 billion (US$478.86 million); Tripod's corresponding revenues increased 28.8% on year to NT$15.101 billion; and Unimicron's amounted to NT$21.823 billion, up 6.1% on year.