You may not be able to buy an iPhone next year? This is really not alarmist. Just two days ago, the media broke the news that technology giants such as Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia are collectively in a panic-they are afraid that they will have no use.
How anxious are they already?
Last fall, Apple sent a special envoy directly to Japan and stationed at Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co., Ltd., asking them to stabilize the production of BT resin substrates.
If Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co., Ltd. wants to stably produce BT resin substrates, one of the major prerequisites isThere is a material called fiberglass cloth that needs to be managed.
This is not enough, and there are even reports that Apple once directly approached Japanese government officials, hoping that they would coordinate with suppliers to increase fiberglass production to ensure the smooth advancement of its 2026 products.
On the other side, Nvidia and AMD were not idle either. They also sent people to Japan in a hurry to urge orders.
What is it that makes billionaire giants so humble? And why is there such a shortage?
After all, fiberglass is the most important part of modern electronic equipment.A very common but essential key material.
What major manufacturers crave is actually high-end glass fiber cloth (Glass Cloth), which is mainly used in the core support structure of high-performance printed circuit boards (PCBs) and advanced chip packaging substrates.
In PCB, glass fiber is used in two aspects, namely the inside and the outside.
Inside is the core core board part. The factory will soak multiple layers of fiberglass cloth in resin (such as epoxy resin), solidify and harden, and then paste copper foil on both sides, which constitutes the basic thickness and hardness of the PCB.
On the outside, the PCB will laminate the core boards covered with different circuits to each other. Between the different layers, glass fiber needs to be used to separate them.
If you think of it like a layer cake, the fiberglass cloth is like the cream sandwiched in the middle.
In the chip, glass fiber is used internally to help the chip resist thermal expansion and contraction and prevent the chip from warping.
But now, in AI servers, 5G communications, and high-speed switches, ordinary electronic cloth in the past is no longer enough.
Nowadays, the giants are grabbing two kinds of high-end products, the first is called Low-dK (low dielectric constant) fiberglass cloth, and the other is Low-CTE (low coefficient of thermal expansion) fiberglass cloth.
Because, in fields such as AI and 5G, data transmission speeds are extremely fast. If ordinary fiberglass cloth is used, the signal running on it is like a car running on muddy ground. It will not run fast and will consume fuel.
so,Fiber cloth must further reduce its own signal resistance to ensure signal transmission efficiency and reduce loss..
On the other hand, everyone must have heard about chip heat dissipation every day. It is common for the internal chip of a mobile phone and computer to be used frequently to reach the temperature of boiling water, let alone the AI chip.
In addition to getting hot, there is another very difficult problem, which isThermal expansion and cooling of medium.
If ordinary fiber cloth is used at such high temperatures, too high a thermal expansion coefficient will cause the solder joints between the substrate and the chip to break or cause the substrate to bend.
Low-CTE cloth (such as T-glass) not only has high hardness, but also has very little thermal expansion and contraction. It can firmly hold the overheated substrate and prevent it from bending and deforming when heated, which has become the favorite of major manufacturers.
So, it seems that the demand for high-end fiberglass is huge.
But what is even more troublesome is that the world can stably use this high-end fabric.Almost only Japan's Nitto Textile Co., Ltd..
This company holds the golden formula of NE-glass and T-glass, and together with two other Japanese companies (Asahi Kasei and Asahi Glass), it monopolizes nearly 70% of the global high-end market.
Even though fiberglass cloth sounds like a piece of plastic cloth, in fact the technical barriers are really quite big.
Developing a qualified electronic glass formula may require thousands of experiments and errors.
Take NE-glass as an example. Nittobo started research and development in the 1990s and has beenIt took more than 30 years of hard work to achieve results..
Moreover, the production cost of fiberglass cloth is also prohibitively high.
Building an electronic yarn kiln requires an investment of more than 500 million to 1.5 billion yuan, and the production expansion cycle often takes more than 2 years. Both technological catch-up and capital investment require long-term follow-up.
So now, whether you are an Android party or an Apple party, whether you are an AMD yes or a veteran scalper, you have to rely on Nittobo's supply.
Originally, everyone has been complaining about the low frequency of mobile phone replacements and the cooling of the personal computer market over the past few years, but Nittobo's supply is completely sufficient.
But everyone knows what happened later. The big AI companies that were throwing away money every day basically poured money into Dongfang's pockets and wanted to take away a lot of production capacity.
Since the market is so hot, why are Nittobo unwilling to go all out to expand production?
In fact, people are a bit disappointed.
As early as around 2022, Nittobo actively expanded production once, but the result was a cold winter in the PC and mobile phone markets, and it suffered a big loss.
Therefore, even if the outside world shouts louder this time, Nittobo has repeatedly stated that,I have to work steadily, ensure quality, and don’t pursue quantity. It doesn’t even matter if I lose some market share..
This "disappearance" made Apple anxious.
In order not to be stuck, Apple has begun to set its sights on China.
According to the news, Apple also quietly sent people to inspect a Chinese fiberglass factory called Honghe Electronic Materials. In 2021, they said they had conquered 9-micron microfiber cloth, and then solved the Low-CTE technology. Therefore, Apple has asked its Japanese partner MGC to help supervise the quality improvement of this Chinese factory and try to cultivate spare tires.
On the other hand, domestic companies such as Taishan Glass Fiber and Taiwan Glass in Taiwan have made breakthroughs in the research and development of Low CTE glass fiber, and have planned to invest 1.428 billion yuan to build a project with an annual output of 35 million meters of special glass fiber cloth. After production is completed, it is expected to be able to produce 35 million meters of high-performance glass fiber cloth per year.
There is also Feilihua who is even more terrifying. They directly bypassed the existing route and directly made M9 grade quartz fiber cloth (Q-glass).It is understood that this is a more advanced material than ordinary fiberglass cloth, specially prepared for NVIDIA's next-generation Rubin architecture, and has now passed NVIDIA's official certification.
However, for major mobile phone and graphics card manufacturers, trial and error may not be the first choice at the moment.
Whether it is iPhone 17 or Nvidia graphics cards, it may depend on Nittobo's attitude, and it may even face the risk of shortages and price increases.
However, during the window period when Japanese manufacturers are expanding production, Chinese manufacturers are accelerating from spare tires to full-time manufacturers.
After all, even Apple has begun to personally support Chinese factories. The monopoly myth of this cloth may not last long.