Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/457216
February 2015 • The PCB Magazine 63 boards. We will continue to see that, but when we talk about 3D though—rather than stacked vias, which are coming but it's too costly yet, es- pecially silicon through-vias—the costs are still prohibitive for now and a percentage of that will be integrated into chipset. But the total volume of parts will go up and there will be more of the smaller parts. It's a fact that last year the surface area of substantive laminate consumed went down. This will be a trend. The net effect is that my guess is, in the next five years globally, we'll see an increase in PCB production of 4–7%, with the leaders being packaging and automotive. We see a great deal of movement towards sensors that detect motion nearby and the direc - tion of the nearby motion. These are going into automotive things, smart tablets, cell phones, etc. So that business is going to continue to ex- plode. If I could put my money on it right now, the way things are in the world, I'd say military boards are going up, though they'll be more se- cretly done and they'll be in the whole country. Medical boards will continue to increase, though it's not a big number, but it'll be in the domes- tic products in Europe and the U.S. In China, even though the doctors are hustlers here, they don't want to touch anything unless it's FDA approved, and that's the United States. Although some of the medical PCBs are made here in China, they're not from as sophisticated a plant as the U.S. boards. Barry: Well, gentlemen, it's been great chat- ting with you. I always enjoy our conversations. Thank you. PCB interview CHINA OUTLOOK continues hamed El-Abd is the president of wkk distribution Limited. Gene weiner serves on the board of directors of wkk Intl (holdings) Ltd., and is the founder of weiner International Consultancy. Lionel Fullwood is the technical director of wkk distribution Ltd. I-Connect007.com CliCk To View video interview recently, I-Connect007 Publisher Barry Matties toured dongguan Somacis Graphic PCB Co. Ltd. (dSG) in dongguan, China. In the last year alone, dSG invested more than US$10M in new equipment. COO Mauro dallora said that the company now has plans to double its revenue without hiring ad- ditional people, which would mean generating more than $100M with a team of approximately 500 people, or more than $200,000 per employee. that's a strong ratio! watch the interview here. Dongguan Somacis Graphic PCB Co. Ltd. (DSG) Invests in the Future