Some China PCB manufacturer, including Founder Technology, Guangdong Goworld and Taigerbuilder Circuit (Suzhou), have entered the supply chains of Apple, Acer and HTC, becoming competitors of Taiwan-based PCB makers, according to Taiwan-based supply chain makers.

The sources pointed out that China-based component suppliers have already caught up with its Taiwan, Japan and Korea competitors in R&D, capacity as well as volumes of orders, and with Intel assisting China makers, non-China component suppliers' situations are expected to get worse in the future.

Thanks to help from Intel, Goworld's OGS touch panel solutions have also entered the supply chains of smartphone vendors ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi.

Taigerbuilder, which focuses on manufacturing high-end HDI PCB and multilayer PCB boards, has landed orders from China-based players such as K-Touch, ZTE, Lenovo, CoolPad, Gionee and Haier as well as international players such as Samsung Electronics, Apple, Canon, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard (HP), HTC and Acer.