5G Era Will Boost Demand of Tungsten and Rare Earths in Electronics

Demand for electronic materials such as tungsten and rare earths exceeded more than 110 billion US dollars per year globally in recent years, according to the Industrial Research Institute (ITRI) of Taiwan. It is expected that with the advent of the 5G and IAOT era the development of the electronic materials industry will be boosted.

Electronic material technology is an industry with high barriers to entry and a long learning curve. To maintain the stability of products, downstream terminal suppliers also attach great importance to brand supply, coupled with the high level of material production technology and long certification period, which accounts for the cost of terminal products. If it is not certified by the design side, it is not easy to be replaced. Some customers have a lower choice of materials, and the market and technical information are less transparent. ITRI conservatively reckoned, such as tungsten and rare earth, the global market demand for electronic materials has exceeded $110 billion annually since 2016, and demand continues to grow.

The China-US trade war in 2019 not only introduced rare earth and tungsten materials into a trump card but also made the world pay attention to the influence of rare earths and tungsten materials on the electronics industry and other related fields. Japan-Korea trade disputes highlighted the importance of electronic materials. ITRI indicated that many countries began to dedicate the 5G and AIOT, mastering the development of the electronic materials industry is the overall advantage of the development of the electronics industry.

According to the data, the demand for rare earths is expected to increase over the next several years, driven by an increase in the use and production of items that are manufactured using rare-earth elements. For example, in 1998, cellular telephones, which have batteries that require rare earth elements, were used by just 5.3% of the global population, according to International Telecommunications Industry data. By 2017, the penetration rate of cellphones worldwide had reached 103.4%.

The total demand for the global semiconductor packaging materials market has been greater than $18 billion annually from 2010 to 2018. To continue Moore's Law, the rise of heterogeneous integration of advanced packaging materials will inevitably lead to another peak in semiconductor packaging materials. The raw materials required in electronic devices such as tungsten and rare earths will be increased along with the arrival of the 5G era.

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