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Lower inventories among customers and a strengthening of market demand has led to rising capacity utilization among Taiwanese PCB makers since last month, with over half of the companies reporting to have reached full utilization.

The companies also said that customers are now more concerned about delivery times than prices, and the decline in ASP (average selling price) seen in the first half of the year has shown signs of stopping. Earlier this year, with the industry in oversupply, PCB makers felt obliged to fight for orders even at prices that did not allow profits, and prices across product lines fell 5-10%.

However, orders began rising in early July, and by late in the month and early this month, urgent orders began swarming in. Orders from the telecommunications sector also began recovering.

Some second- and third-tier PCB makers, however, are said to be still trying to win orders with low prices in their transition from making PCBs for motherboards and notebooks to sectors such as wireless communications.

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Source: DigiTimes