Top 10 Chinese PCB/PCBA manufacturers in 2023? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 10:18:07 am
content: Today's web is full of SEO articles.For some cases, ChatGPT is giving better result. But all "he" learnt was from those SEO articles.On StackExchange Electrical Engineering forum, once I compared ChatGPT result with Wikipedia and some other sources.But the moderators banned my account for 5 days and the post was removed!I hope Dave won't block my this EEVblog account because of this paragraph.As a result, when we search like "best PCB company", "top PCBA manufacturer" on Google, we get so many different "TOP 10" articles.To be fair for ranking PCB companies (especially Chinese located ones), we collected all the companies from existing articles.I could get17 "TOP 10" articles about China PCB companiesbetween 2020-2022.Oh no, I got 90+ companies!I expected it would be 20~30. Which "TOP 10" article is the most close to the reality?This isour version of "TOP 10".https://pcbcrew.com/blog/top10-pcba-manufacturers-in-china-2023And here's all the data we collected for those 90+ Chinese PCB companies.In this page, table headers are interactive. So we can get sorted results instantly by clicking each header cell.https://pcbcrew.com/apps/ranking/When we say the "top", it might be mostly like result quality, support quality, prototyping/production cost, lead time and shipping time.And the most important thing is "for-us"!The best PCBA company for Apple or Toyota cannot be same as the best one for mine.I tried to contact all those companies to compare pricings.I also got a stunning result. For a same design and quantity, the costs was ranging 95 ~ 700.I used one of our recent design with some microcontrollers, all the components are available in any of LCSC, Digikey, and Mouser.Company A quoted $95 while Company B quoted $700!And all others were between this range.I am not sure if I can put those pricings in public without agreements from each company.Thus, one of the most important factor, cost is not in the ranking table currently.What factors do you think the most important to rank (or pick one for yourself)?

author: gamalot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 10:33:31 am
content: Come on! How is it possible that JLCPCB (and other manufacturers of similar scale) will be among the top 10? This joke is not funny at all ...---Sorry I didn't notice it's"for-us"

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 10:34:01 am
content: Here I attach my ranking table screenshot for quicker reference.

author: SMTech
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 11:21:13 am
content: Quote from: pcbcrew on February 22, 2023, 10:34:01 amThese are meaningless stats, it is not possible to scrape this data to order in a way that is useful. All it tells you is that, surprise surprise, the companies that focus on web sales and very heavy SEO and promotion have the highest webby metrics. Most of them are also guilty of bribing or otherwise incentivizing backlinks, favorable reviews and spamming forums which generates those numbers

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 11:24:18 am
content: Unimicron has 2.4 Billion revenue, something like 5% of PCBA global market share, and not on the list.PCBway has 10M revenue (looked it up), gets top slot.

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 11:32:55 am
content: If so, what other factors can you propose for ranking?i agree with that those metrics show thier marketing effort.However, putting more on marketing means they are trying to treat customers well.For me as end customer, I need fast response, instant quote, cheap price, and affordable pricing.Some of the big companies who are not putting much effort on web marketing even do not reply to me.As I ask quote for a few pcs of prototyping or small production.Thus, for me,the more marketing score, the better customer support (or at least they're trying to).

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 11:37:42 am
content: Thank you for letting me know another big player, Unimicron.I'll check it and add on my list to compare if it's correct.I tried to get annual revenue data of such big companies.However, most of them are not publishing their revenues.If revenue or company size affects ranking, what about some factories with strong B2B customers?What about PCB companies that have long-term contract with Huawei, Xiomi, Lenovo, etc.?Their sales and revenue will be certainly on top of the lists.But they are really not worth for us, end customers, in my opinion.Maybe I should change this forum headline as "Top 10 .... for us, engineers"

author: gamalot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 11:39:17 am
content: Quote from: tszaboo on February 22, 2023, 11:24:18 amand Unimicron ranked No. 9 in China's PCB market share last year.

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 11:41:42 am
content: Could you share the reference link?

author: gamalot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 11:46:18 am
content: Quote from: pcbcrew on February 22, 2023, 11:41:42 amAre you really Chinese? It looks like you don't know anything about the PCB market in China ......

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 12:41:32 pm
content: You can just share the reference.Readers of this forum thread will justify the credit of the source of the link you provide.I may and may not know Chinese PCBA market, though I worked in Chinese PCBA industry for many years, including the last year at JLCPCB.By the way,Unimicron is not a Chinese PCBA company.It's Taiwanese.When I'm talking about Chinese PCBA industry, it means companies in China mainland, like in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Dalian, Huizhou.Do not mess Chinese market and Taiwanese market.Customer and client bases are different a lot between two.

author: Jackster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 12:47:51 pm
content: This is an ad. And a joke.

author: voltsandjolts
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 12:58:59 pm
content: https://www.pcdandf.com/pcdesign/index.php/editorial/menu-features/16699-the-unsinkable-unstoppable-pcb-market

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 01:08:20 pm
content: Your link is about global market share, also considered Chinese and Taiwanese market each different.Ranked based on revenue of PCB companies, whose stocks are in public trading in stock market.Please consider that this thread title was "Top 10ChinesePCB manufacturers in 2023".Our ranking is for Chinese PCB manufacturers only.And in my opinion, many big Chinese PCB companies are not on such stock market.For example,LCSC & JLCPCB, which is omitted in the linked article, is probably the biggest player in China.

author: voltsandjolts
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 02:36:59 pm
content: Quote from: pcbcrew on February 22, 2023, 01:08:20 pmWhat was your (JLCPCB) turnover in 2021?

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 02:44:11 pm
content: I quited JLCPCB engineer position last year.I'll ask my former colleagues in marketing team if it's okay to publish their revenue here.

author: pdp11
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 03:15:39 pm
content: Il back in europe for my pcb project after some deceptions in 2021.I buyed form aisler.com for the last 3 boards.The pcb upload is less trivial than jlcpcb.pricies are a littre higher, but shipement is less expensive and no custom surprises.the stencil is flat and matches the pcb.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 03:39:40 pm
content: It's more like ad spending rating.Quote from: pcbcrew on February 22, 2023, 01:08:20 pmMaybe in hobbyist segment but not even close overall.

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 03:44:53 pm
content: Some factors, e.g. backlinks may be totally dependent to their ad spending.I did precise inspection of top two in my list - PCBWay and JLCPCB.All the backlinks are from quality sources. All looked like written by professionals and reviewed by real customers.Some other lower-rated companies have spammy backlinks simply built by ad spending.Backlinks may be ad spending, but quality backlinks are not easy return of money.What about YouTube and Twitter followers?Are all these thousands of followers and subscribers are fake? Maybe and may not be.I hope someone can add follower quality analysis report for these companies.Anyhow, a company is putting a lot of money on marketing and customer support is better than doing nothing for me, personally.So, please suggest some better factors you think that can be better than ad spending rating.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 03:46:06 pm
content: Quote from: pcbcrew on February 22, 2023, 12:41:32 pmBut they have Chinese subsidiary.

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 03:48:08 pm
content: In that case, that company is selling Chinese-made products with Taiwanese price.It is something like LeCroy's Oscilloscope rebranding.I know some agency companies in US and Canada, who are selling PCBs at their pricing with "made in US" advertising.I won't tell if this is good for end customers or not.Samsung is currently building fab in US.I don't think that anybody will include Samsung in future "Top 10 electronics companies in US 2030" article.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 03:57:33 pm
content: Quote from: pcbcrew on February 22, 2023, 03:48:08 pmWhy not? For example, if some company is headquartered in some other country, shall it be excluded from the list even if it produces more than other companies with local headquarters?

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 04:01:04 pm
content: Remember, "Top Ten" is not data or even a logical ordinal list. It is a title. It can be whatever the author wants. I find it a bit suspicious that pcbcrew's only posts are in this thread. Is it trying to help or to market something? If it is truly to help, what criteria were used andhow were they weighted?

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 04:03:17 pm
content: My answer is yes.Here in China, a lot of automobile factories. For example, BMW's biggest factory is in Shenyang. Nissan and many others have plants in Changchun.When regarding to "Top 10 Chinese Automobile manufacturer", will be BMW or Nissan included?They will be certainly in the list of "Top 10 in EU" or "Top 10 in Japan".

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 04:05:48 pm
content: I already explained how I ranked them and what factors are considered.At the beginning of this thread and of course in the links.What more factors would you like to add?Which existing factors do you like to give more weights?As the current included factors were the only quantitative numbers I could get, it became like that.And that's why I opened this thread to get better idea of real factors to improve my top 10 list.

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 04:13:09 pm
content: Quote from: jpanhalt on February 22, 2023, 04:01:04 pmAlready explained what factors are in our ranking table.Weighting each factor was also difficult for me.it will vary what factor you think the most important among the listed factors.So, what factor do you want to give the more weight?It seems like some might think this discussion is for another ads.It was not like that at all. If you carefully look at the ranking list, our PCBCrew is also there.When clicking each factor headline, my compay PCBCrew goes to the bottom of 90 other companies.If this was for ads, I would rather put my company in top 10 list, like many other articles are already doing.Also I am asking in this thread what more factors you are like to add more to make the ranking list fair.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 04:29:35 pm
content: Quote from: pcbcrew on February 22, 2023, 04:03:17 pmWhat about Volvo, is it a EU company? It's owned by Geely. Is it one of the top EU car manufacturers or shall it be excluded from the list?

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 04:49:10 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on February 22, 2023, 04:29:35 pmVolvo is EU company. Only Volvo car section ownership is sold.However, Volvo car is selling their car under their original brand still.Currently, Volvo is known as a Swedish multinational company. And only car section is owned by Greely group.Even after ownership sold, Volvo logo is shared and in strong cooperation between the two.The Shenyang BMW factory is selling cars with name of "BMW 330", not like "SHENYANG-FACTORY-NAME 330".PCBCrew has a office in Shenzhen, a factory in Zhuhai.When I'm introducing my company to customers, what should I say?Shenzhen company or Zhuhai company? Maybe "Shenzhen company" as our office is here.When comparing Chinese PCB market share across local regions, where should I include my company?While sales is made in Shenzhen and production is made in Zhuhai?

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 05:28:09 pm
content: @pcbcrewRe: RankingThat table didn't seem to define "DA"I don't see quality defined or listed. No listing for turnaround time. The secondary references you use seem to be mostly popularity indexes. Maybe the title should be "Top Ten Most Mentioned."

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 05:45:23 pm
content: Quote from: pcbcrew on February 22, 2023, 11:32:55 amMake a design. Order it in different companies. Publish price, shipping cost, timing, asses quality, post pictures, try support inquiries. This will be something valuable.What you have published is totally irrelevant. These metrics are invented by people who sell Internet advertising. If anything, these metrics are opposite of what matters. If a company spends lots of money on advertising, this is the money that is saved somewhere else - like in buying crappy FR-4 material instead of quality one. When you choose highly marketed company you're paying for advertisement, not for product or service you're hoping to get.<edit>One of the parts of Internet advertisement is that they push you into different bogus top 10 lists. Any you should never ever trust such lists unless you can verify the merit of the list by using real facts.

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 06:18:59 pm
content: Quote from: jpanhalt on February 22, 2023, 05:28:09 pmTurnaround time is a good factor to be added.But how to quantize "quality"?Isn't a quality a qualitative factor that cannot be numerized?

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 06:32:25 pm
content: Quote from: NorthGuy on February 22, 2023, 05:45:23 pmMakes sense. we tried already and here are some results, not full.The actual comparison table had more than 15 factor columns.As we could not get full data on all columns, several columns with less data are not included in current published table.

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 06:57:33 pm
content: Good to see "build time" and "assembly time" which equate to what I meant by turnaround time (often abbreviated "TAT" in the US). I usually don't get the boards assembled.As for quality, I agree that is difficult to assess quantitatively. Pictures help and let the reader make his own decisions. You can also create a standard challenge board. Say, one with small footprints, narrow traces, narrow spacing, plated slots, etc. Testing for shorts may not be different, but photographs showing missing solder mask and other features revealed by your test boards could be used in an appendix. For your table you could simply list the number of non-shorting faults found. Of course, a short would get pretty heavy weighting. Another approach is to select a group of users (if available) and ask how many defective boards they receive.A star ranking could be used with a sufficiently large user base, but I don't have a lot of faith in star-based ranking and consider it the most unreliable quality estimate. User comments may be helpful if the selection is not biased. I find comments better to assess performance/quality than stars when making Internet purchases.

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 07:08:31 pm
content: Quote from: pcbcrew on February 22, 2023, 06:32:25 pmThere's a web site which does price comparison:https://pcbshopper.com/

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 07:10:21 pm
content: As you can see in the picture, some companies did not reply at all for our quote asking.To be fair, I asked this quoting to one of our saleswoman.Her job is getting PCB orders from online, she had no preference on any company above.In contrast, I personally prefer JLC for prototyping and some other companies for mass production as they are much cheaper.Note that the above screenshot is for 5pcs of small qty prototyping order of a custom Raspberry CM4 carrier board I designed in Nov, 2022.For mass production, their expensiveness order might be different and more companies might be replied.

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 07:14:17 pm
content: Quote from: NorthGuy on February 22, 2023, 07:08:31 pmYes, it does.I asked my JLC colleagues if JLC provides API for quoting or price calculation.The answer was no.I am not sure how PCBShopper is doing that.Maybe using web scrapping tech? Or did they find the claculation fomular of each company?I should compare the actual price between PCBShopper and its listed companies, but not yet.Did someone already tried to compare?

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 07:20:53 pm
content: Does your list of the top manufacturers include anything about a formal quality system?I have learned to never deal with PCB manufacturers (for production) unless they have an independently-audited quality system in place, preferably ISO9001.Otherwise, the quality can good or bad. How thick is the copper today? What laminate did you use?china is dumping pcb's on the West, many North American fabs have shut down. They could not even buy the bare laminate for the price of completed PCB's. We all like the low prices. NA they charge too much for setup fees, I am glad that it gone.

author: pcbcrew
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2023, 08:35:02 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on February 22, 2023, 07:20:53 pmYes, they have. But not all PCBA orders are treated under the certified process.Many PCB company websites have several certification documents on top of their front pages.No need to mention about those big companies we're discussing in the list.Below I attached screenshots of a website from a smaller company, that are not in my top list.Will all PCB/PCBA go through those processes?For PCB fabrication - yes. Small quantity and mass production orders are manufactured together in the same process. (As far as I experienced in my previous companies)But assembly - not. For small quantity orders, due to high SMT setup fee, most of them do hand assembly.On YouTube, I watched a Gigabyte (Taiwanese computer motherboard manufacturer) factory visit video, where some parts are put on board by hand.All motherboards made by Gigabyte would be certainly 100% meet ISO9001 standard.Hand vs machine is not directly related to quality or standard.However, when PCB manufacturers assemble components for small qty prototyping orders, almost everything is done by hand.Through-hole component, surface mounting components, and even BGA chips with hundreds of balls.And the testing is just ... human-eye testing.The skills of soldering technicians are amazing. Sometimes, I could not distinguish hand-soldered board vs machine-soldered boards.But, it does not meet ISO9001-like formal standard, of course.