The “Wind Chaser” Born in the 5G Wave

After the smartphone market entered the stock cycle, product innovation became a common goal for upstream and downstream industries. As the domestic smartphone industry was affected by multiple external factors such as the Sino-US trade friction, the pace of innovation in the domestic 5G industry has further accelerated.

In June 2019, a picture of Miao Wei, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, issuing 5G commercial licenses to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Broadcasting Corporation went viral on WeChat Moments. At the same time, domestic first-tier terminal brands represented by Huawei have successively released 5G mobile phones. This means that the first year of 5G commercialization has officially arrived.

5G is coming faster than people think, and many people don’t even know what it is or what it will change. Considering the current development status of my country’s 5G industry, there is still some distance to go before 5G brings dividends to the industry, and this distance needs to be filled by upstream and downstream manufacturers in the industry chain.

5G commercialization still needs the help of "East Wind"

Driven by the country and the industry, the domestic smartphone market is about to usher in the first wave of 5G mobile phones. 5G mobile phones launched by multiple terminal brands such as Huawei, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, ZTE, and OnePlus will all be available this year. According to the "July 2019 Domestic Mobile Phone Market Operation Analysis Report" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, from January to July, the total shipments of the domestic mobile phone market were 220 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 5.5%, including 211 million 4G mobile phones and 72,000 5G mobile phones.

Although the entire 5G industry is ready to go, it is undeniable that the global 5G industry is still in its early stages of development.

Not long ago, at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office, Wen Ku, spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and director of the Information and Communications Development Department, said: "The topic of 5G has been very hot in recent times and everyone is paying close attention to it. Recently, everyone has also seen some news and reports from various news media, such as the first call made in a certain place or a service launched in a certain place. Here I want to say that these are just small steps taken by 5G. We will find in our work that everyone feels that 5G has difficulties now."

Taking the signal transmission of 5G mobile phones as an example, it is well known that smartphones are one of the first application scenarios of 5G technology. However, there is now a problem that mobile phone signal transmission is blocked by metal structures.

Prior to this, in order to ensure that the product has a certain degree of drop resistance, a large number of smartphones were assembled using metal structural parts. However, the impact of metal on the performance of mobile phone antennas is very obvious, which has also become the biggest disadvantage of mobile phone metal structural parts.

Therefore, currently, mobile phones with metal shells (whether it is the frame, middle frame or back cover) generally choose to use other non-conductive media (such as rubber) to separate the metal parts so that the signal can pass well. But even if this can improve the signal problem, the selection of partition materials, partition width, partition position and other aspects will also cost a lot of R&D costs.

Although a lot of effort has been put into it, there are still problems in actual product applications.

Especially when 5G enters the millimeter wave stage, the sensitivity to metal is more obvious. The continued use of previous metal structural parts may even directly block the signal. In addition, as wireless charging functions begin to become popular on smartphones, metal casings will also directly hinder the transmission of electromagnetic waves.

Faced with the urgent problem of realizing 5G commercialization, demetallization of smartphone structural parts is imminent.

The industry chain is actively deploying 5G

As mentioned above, based on the improvement of 5G communication transmission technology, the application of technologies such as WiFi, NFC, Bluetooth, and wireless charging has further increased the complexity of communication transmission. The current mainstream metal casing has obvious bottlenecks in signal shielding, and non-metallic materials such as glass and ceramics are becoming new choices. Especially driven by applications such as 5G and wireless charging, more and more terminal manufacturers choose to remove the metal middle frame.

This also shows that with the development of smartphone technology, terminal manufacturers have more requirements for appearance structural parts. In addition to considering functionality and appearance, they also need to use materials that can avoid the above-mentioned problems.

From this we can see that in addition to metal, there are also new options for plastic materials for mobile phone structural parts on the market, such as glass, ceramics, and composite materials.

An industry insider pointed out: "In the 5G era, non-metallic materials such as glass, ceramics and composite panels will be more widely used. Moreover, composite panels can now be made very colorful. This material will be widely used in thousand-yuan machines that do not require texture but only appearance."

In summary, the product demand caused by technological updates has undoubtedly accelerated the pace of demetallization of mobile phone structural parts. In the past two years, we can see that many industry chain companies that mainly deal in metal structural parts and appearance parts have been significantly impacted by market changes.

On the contrary, some companies in the industry chain have sensed the change in market trends and have made early arrangements for 5G.

The author consulted Holitech's 2019 interim report and learned that the company has already laid out products and technologies such as LCP, COF, wireless charging, high-frequency composite materials, and absorbing materials, and related products and technologies will be fully used in 5G products.

According to Holitech, the company continues to increase its investment in the research and development of 5G material technology, creating a complete layout of the entire industry chain to meet customers' needs for high-tech and future technologies, so as to realize the localization of high-end materials. At present, the company is committed to the research and development of high-end flexible circuit boards, LCP flexible circuits, COF flexible circuits, high-pixel cameras, dual cameras and other fields. Continuous investment in research and development has accelerated the company's layout in emerging material fields such as wireless charging magnetic materials, high-frequency composite materials, and wave-absorbing materials. In the 5G era, components are fully updated to 5G materials. Seizing the lead in the industry transformation, the company will continue to maintain its dominant position in the traditional module industry. The company's multi-faceted layout of technology in 5G materials will make the company likely to become a core enterprise in domestic 5G materials. As of June 30, 2019, the company has 1,487 patents, including 233 invention patents.

In the first half of this year, Holitech's FPC products achieved operating income of 564 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.30%. During the reporting period, the company's first phase of the new FPC production line in Xinfeng has entered the mass production stage. In addition, the material products achieved operating income of 111 million yuan during the period, a year-on-year increase of 115.03%.

Holitech said that with the advent of the 5G era, the company has initially completed its ecological layout in the 5G field through the development of LCP technology and COF technology, combined with wireless charging modules, high-frequency composite materials, and wave-absorbing materials. It will continue to invest in technology research and development, and currently provides products and services to first-line customers at home and abroad. The company's technical layout for 5G will gradually be transformed into orders, which will help improve the company's core competitiveness and contribute to the company's long-term development.