Current Situation and Development Trend of Graphite Heat Dissipating Material Industry in China

1、 Market scale of graphite thermal materials

      Graphite is a new type of heat conducting material, which has the characteristics of high temperature resistance, light weight, high thermal conductivity, strong stability and small coefficient of thermal expansion. It is not only conducive to the miniaturization, miniaturization and high power of electronic equipment, but also can reduce the weight of electronic components and increase the payload.

     Graphite heat dissipating materials can be used in the heat dissipating of mobile phones, tablet computers, notebook computers, smart TVs and other electronic products, which are in the upstream of electronic products. Therefore, the development of graphite cooling material industry is closely related to the development of downstream smart phones and other electronic devices.

(1).The scale of the industry is expanding on the whole

      With the improvement and development of synthetic graphite technology, the scale of China's graphite and carbon products industry has gradually expanded, and the annual sales revenue of the industry has continued to grow. In 2018, China's graphite and carbon products revenue reached 300 billion yuan.

(2). The scale of China's smart phone market continues to expand

      Due to cost and other reasons, currently graphite heat sink materials are mainly used in high-end smart phones, such as iPhone, Samsung note series mobile phones, etc. Some low-end mobile phones use little graphite heat sink. With the development of smart phones to multi-core and high-performance, heat sink will become an important constraint for the development of mobile phones. Graphite heat sink will become one of the main heat sink products of smart phones, and its application proportion in smart phones will be further improved.

      In recent years, with the maturity of 4G network technology and the approaching of 5g era, the mobile communication industry has developed rapidly. Smart phones have become an essential electronic product for domestic consumers to communicate and connect to the network. Due to the rapid upgrading of smart phones, compared with the increasing scale of new users, the market for old users to change their mobile phones is larger, which will become the driving point for the future growth of the mobile phone market. Therefore, the development space and market scale of smart phones will continue to expand in the future.

      Due to the influence of cost and other factors, the application space of computer, wearable devices and other consumer electronics is relatively large. The application of graphite thermal materials in tablet computers, wearable devices, ultra-thin notebooks and other electronic products has not yet begun to be popular. With the continuous improvement of the performance and volume of all kinds of consumer electronic products, the requirements for heat dissipation of all kinds of consumer electronic products will be higher and higher. The demand for graphite thermal materials will gradually increase.

• Ultra thin notebook application brings new market to the industry

      On March 10, 2015, Apple released a new notebook MacBook, which uses a new design of heat dissipation, placing a whole piece of high thermal conductivity graphite film under the main board, replacing the original fan and silica gel. After Apple pioneered, notebook manufacturers around the world will continue to use high thermal conductivity graphite thermal film in ultra-thin notebook. The shipment of ordinary notebook computers dropped to 105 million in 2017. In the foreseeable future, the trend will be more and more obvious. The ultra-thin notebook computers will increase from 26 million in 2013 to 57 million in 2017. The area of graphite film used in ultra-thin notebook computers is far larger than that of mobile phones, which will become a new growth point of graphite heat dissipation material industry.

• The rise of wearable devices promotes the increase of market scale
  

     In recent years, wearable devices are booming. The shipments of smart wearable devices such as various smart bracelets represented by health pedometers, smart glasses represented by Google glass, and smart watches represented by applewatch are increasing rapidly. China's wearable device market scale also shows explosive growth. In 2016, China's wearable device market reached 22.8 billion yuan, up 67.65% year on year. The chip set, screen, battery and other components in intelligent wearable devices have a high demand for heat dissipation, which will further promote the market application and market scale expansion of graphite heat dissipation materials.

2、 The relationship between graphite thermal material industry and its upstream and downstream

(1). Correlation between industry and upstream industry

     The upstream industries of graphite heat dissipation materials mainly include PI film manufacturers, insulating film manufacturers, release film manufacturers and foam manufacturers, among which there are many domestic manufacturers producing insulating film, release film and foam and the market is in full competition; PI film is a high molecular material, widely used in heat dissipation materials and other industries. Due to the high performance of PI film required by graphite thermal materials. PI film is an important part of graphite thermal materials, and the price of PI film has a great influence on graphite thermal materials.

(2). The relationship between graphite thermal material industry and downstream industry

    The downstream of graphite thermal materials industry is mainly the electronic products industry with high thermal performance requirements, including smart phones, led, tablet computers, etc. The demand of downstream customers for graphite cooling materials directly affects the development scale of the industry. With the increasing demand of downstream customers for graphite thermal materials, as well as the new application of other electronic products for graphite thermal materials. In the future, the development scale of graphite thermal materials industry will be larger and larger.

3、 Competition pattern of graphite cooling material industry

      The use of graphite thermal materials began with the rapid development of consumer electronics, and began to be widely used in smart phones in 2011, which is a new industry. The first to enter the field of graphite cooling materials is foreign enterprises. There are few domestic manufacturers of graphite cooling materials. Influenced by the late development of the industry, the concentration of domestic graphite cooling material industry is relatively low. With the technical progress of various manufacturers, the development speed of the industry will be improved