Consumer Electronics
Consumer Electronics
Consumer electronic products are ubiquitous in our lives. The application of many consumer electronic products has changed our living habits, improved our quality of life, and created countless jobs.
Where are consumer electronics?
There is usually no clear standard for the division of consumer electronics products. In Asia, consumer electronics products refer to audio and video products for personal and household use, mainly including TV sets, DVD players (VCD, SVCD, DVD), VCRs, camcorders, radios, tape recorders, sound systems, record players, compact disc players (CDs), as well as telephones, personal computers, home office equipment, home electronic healthcare equipment.
With the innovation of technology and the emergence of new products and applications, digital cameras, mobile phones, PDAs, and other products are also becoming emerging consumer electronic products. Since the late 1990s, devices that integrate the three major fields of computer, information, and communication, have been widely used daily. Its functions include audio-visual, information processing, and two-way network communication. It consists of a processor, related supporting hardware (such as a display card, storage medium, IC card, or credit card reading device), an embedded operating system, and software packages at the application layer. In a wide area, devices include all home appliances that can exchange information through the network, such as PCs, set-top boxes, HPCs, DVDs, super VCDs, wireless data communication equipment, video game equipment, smart TV boxes, WEBTV, etc. Audio, video, and communication devices are the major entertainment consumer electronics products and applications.
On a large scale, refrigerators, washing machines, and microwave ovens with communication features have also become part of consumer electronics products. Consumer electronic products are simple in architecture, with electronic components assembled on the PCB boards, driven by software systems, and are usually used for entertainment, communication, and clerical purposes. In terms of size, in addition to the large household appliances related to size, most are developing towards the development of light, thin and small for easy portability or use. In addition, most of them have energy-saving designs and standby functions.
| Type | Application |
| Entertainment | Wearables, AR/VR, Digital Cameras, DVDs, VCRs, Game Boxes, Electronic Musical Instruments |
| Communication | Smartphones, smart watches, routers, TVs, set-top boxes |
| Home Office | Laptops, Desktops, Printers, Shredders |
| Home Appliance | Refrigerator, washing machine, smart kitchen utensils, baby appliances |
| Other | Power supply, charger, LED light |
What Are the New Application Areas of Consumer Electronics?
5G
5Gwill bring an overall wave of phone replacements. Low latency and high speed make the Internet of Things more and more possible, and traditional electronic devices are also being upgraded with communication features.
TWS Earphone
IPhone sales have grown slowly in the past two years, while AirPods, launched in the past two years, have exploded. Shipments doubled in 2018, and more than 50% are expected to remain in the next two to three years—compound growth space. In addition to AirPods, and Android manufacturers have also launched true wireless Bluetooth headsets.
Device upgrades brought by 3D sensing technology
Dual-camera/multi-cameras add other optical sensors to collect depth and position information to achieve 3D modeling. The core application is face unlocking. Apple’s high-end phones since the iPhone X have adopted this technology, while Android phones are currently used less, and there is still a lot of room for penetration and improvement in the future. The composition of 3D cameras can be roughly divided into upstream infrared sensors, infrared light sources, optical components, optical lenses, and CMOS image sensors. Midstream sensor modules, camera modules, light source foundry, light source detection, and image algorithms.
What are PCBs used for consumer electronics?
Consumer electronics is one of the most widely-volume-used areas of PCB. This area has the largest shipments and hundreds of thousands of product forms, from household home lighting, smart home appliances, the largest consumer electronics products-smart, phones, notebooks, and computers at the office, tens of thousands of IoT products, and wearable devices. Consumer electronic products have moderate reliability requirements but chase the most competitive price in their short product life cycle time, so in Consumer Electronics PCBs types, low-cost single-side PCBs and double sides PCBs are the most popular design options. In addition, industrial design is one of the key success factors; these always make flexible PCBs the candidates.
| PCB Type | Multi Layers | LED | High Frequency | Aluminum | Thick Copper | High Tg | HDI | Flexible | Rigid Flex |
| Consumer Electronics | x | x | x | x | x | x | x |
Problems encountered in PCB manufacturing of high-end consumer electronic products
Unlike mid and low-end consumer electronics products that pursue the ultimate cost-effectiveness, high-end consumer electronic products still have strict requirements on PCB materials and manufacturing.
HDI Board
the requirements for inner layer wiring and pattern size control are getting higher and higher. There are many impedance signal lines in the inner layer. To ensure the impedance’s integrity, the lines’ width and spacing are basically about 3 mils or less. There are many layers, and the thin core board easily wrinkles. These factors will increase the production cost of the inner layer. The number of layers is increasing, and the alignment requirements of the inner layer are also getting higher and higher.
Film
The film will expand and shrink under the influence of the temperature and humidity of the workshop environment. The board will have the same expansion and contraction, which makes the alignment accuracy between the inner layers more difficult to control.
Stack up and Lamination. The superposition of multiple boards and PP (prepreg) makes delamination, sliding plate, and steam drum residue easy during the lamination process. If there are too many layers, the expansion and shrinkage control and size coefficient compensation cannot be consistent; if the interlayer insulating layer is thin, it is easy to cause the failure of the interlayer reliability test.
High Tg or other special plates
The roughness of drilling holes of different materials is different, which increases the difficulty of removing glue residue in the holes. High-density multilayer boards have high hole density, low production efficiency, and are easy to break the knife. Between different network vias, the hole’s edge is too close to cause the CAF effect problem.
Our Consumer Electronics PCB
Layers: 8 L Thickness: 1.2mm
Out Layer Copper Thickness: H OZ
Inner Layer Copper Thickness: H OZ
Min Hole Size: 0.2mm
Min Line Width/Space: 3mil
Surface Finish: ENIG(3U)
Application: Router
Layers: 4 L Thickness: 1.6mm
Out Layer Copper Thickness: 1 OZ
Inner Layer Copper Thickness: 1 OZ
Min Hole Size: 0.4mm
Min Line Width/Space: 4mil
Surface Finish: ENIG
Application: LED Display
Layers: 4 L Thickness: 1.2mm
Out Layer Copper Thickness: 1 OZ
Inner Layer Copper Thickness: 1 OZ
Min Hole Size: 0.25mm
Min Line Width/Space: 4mil
Surface Finish: ENIG
Application: Bluetooth
What are the major challenges for consumer electronics？
The global market is constantly evolving. No other industry has experienced more changes than consumer electronics. New technologies emerge at an astonishing rate. Electronics companies of all shapes and sizes face the following challenges.
Short Product Life Cycle
Consumer electronic products have a short life cycle time, usually no more than 3-5 years. With the development of the Internet of Things(IoT), the new generation of products will usually greatly improve on integration, intelligence, and energy consumption. It is generally believed that The consumer electronics industry follows Moore’s Law. When the price remains unchanged, the number of components that can be accommodated on an integrated circuit will double about every 18-24 months, and the performance will also double. Consumer electronic products are constantly iterating with the continuous improvement of integrated circuits and appearance designs.
Price Challenge
The homogeneity of most consumer electronic products is relatively serious. And most of the functions or features used are similar, and the differences between products are more from intangible aspects such as brands or software. The price is stable, and externally, it needs to face fierce competition from other homogeneous products, and most of the time, price is the key to more sales.
Access to Raw Material
Due to geopolitical remediation and the new crown virus epidemic, supply chain security has become more and more challenging, and how to obtain stable supply at competitive prices for a big task for the supply chain team.
Fluctuating Demand
Because of the characteristics of the short life cycle time and fast renewed demand for consumer electronics, consumers’ consumption preferences are also constantly changing, which usually brings great challenges to demand management. Managing the stock level, controlling excess, and achieving sales targets are crucial to the fiscal result.
Environmental Protection and Energy Saving
New standards and regulations require electronics manufacturers to consider the environmental impact of a product’s entire life cycle. Every aspect must be considered, from the manufacturing process and chemicals used to consumer energy and product disposal. It is increasingly important for electronics manufacturers to produce smaller products with longer lifespans and lower power consumption.
What Can Eashub do for consumer electronics assembly?
Multi Solutions for both and high-end PCBs
Our manufacturing solutions are also different for the different positioning of low-end and high-end PCBs. For low-end PCB manufacturing, we will use general-purpose FR4 or glass fiber and manufacture in plants that own ISO9001 certification and experience producing volume consumer electronics PCBs. For High-end product that uses HDI or other special materials, it will be produced in factories with PCB manufacturing capabilities for industrial and medical products.
Low-Cost PCB Assembly Solution
Eashub can provide customers with competitive low-cost solutions. We own facility resources in low-cost areas of China. We developed a new manufacturing base in Southwest China. It passed quality standards like ISO9001 and owned rich experience in mass-producing consumer electronic products, where labor costs can be 30% lower than in coastal areas above.
High Automation
Eashub will reduce the unit cost by improving the automatic ratio for large-scale consumer electronic products. For consumer electronic products with strong manufacturability, we will use the high-speed SMT machine, automatic inserting machine, online AOI, and other equipment.
Localize Supply Chain Resources
Eashub is located in the bay area, the center of the global electronics manufacturing industry. We have stable and long-term cooperative relations with hundreds of agents, traders, and manufacturers. For large-scale needs, we can prepare key components in advance. While for urgent short-term needs, our supply chain can also quickly react to obtain the components needed by customers or recommend appropriate local alternative brands.
Supply Chain Management Model
Eashub will establish variant supply-demand models for customers, including build-to-order （BTO), build-to-stock (BTS), and build to Forecast(BTF), together with an appropriate raw material bank. In addition, we continue to shorten the overall cycle time of products by compressing the procurement cycle and production cycle of components and achieve maximum sales with the smallest inventory level
DFM improvement
For each new customer, we will arrange a dedicated NPI production line and give our professional DFM suggestions in each gate review. It contributes to material saving through SMT parts replacing PTH parts, popular parts replacing none popular parts and low-price alternative parts.
Manufacturing Experience in Communication Industry
More and more products have become smart devices after they own additional communication features. Eahub has many years of production experience on telecom products, which will help our customers to upgrade their products from traditional products to smart products.
