Dominique Numakura’s Newsletter from Japan

Taiwanese PWB manufacturers (Continued).The market situation of Taiwan PWB industry is more serious than what I reported last week. It is good news for the manufacturers, but it is bad news for the customers. I was visiting with the major circuit board manufacturers, flex manufacturers and material manufacturers in Taiwan last week. All of their managements told the same story. It happened during this last summer. The orders increased significantly in August. Before that time, several manufacturers still had room to accept more orders. However, the new orders occupied all of the manufacturing capacities including China’s operations in the next few months. I could find only one company who had more room. This company was expecting this booming and it was installing the new machines. The company started the operation of the new lines in August. This capacity will be sold shortly.Accordingly, the manufacturers do not guarantee short delivery time for the new customers with lower prices. They have been asking the current customers to increase the price for the current projects. It is completely a "seller’s market." The customers are competing with each other to have the manufacturing capacities. Several major customers have been placing the orders without the pricing. Certainly, no manufacture will accept the price negotiations.One president of a company told me that the company would move to high end products to utilize the limited manufacturing capacity. The manufacturers were concerned about the decline again in the future, and most of the companies have no further big plans for expanding the manufacturing capacity soon. The good news for the customers is that the Taiwanese PWB manufacturers are still aggressive about having more orders. But they are not talking about the next two months. They are talking about the business of the second quarter or the second half of the next year. Dominique NumakuraHeadline NewsMatsushita & Toshiba (Major electronics companies) Decided to terminate all of the domestic production of CRT for the TV products by September 2004.Sumitomo Chemical (Major chemical company) Will invest 50 billion Yen to expand the capacity of LCD material in their Korean plant for the LCD manufacturers in Korea.Sony (Major electronics company) Founded a new business organization "MEMS Device Division" for the in-house production of the micro size mechanical devices.Ulvac (Vacuum equipment manufacturer) Will start the manufacturing service of MEMS devices utilizing its semiconductor manufacturing equipment.Central Glass (Major glass material manufacturer) Developed a thin low distortion glass substrate for the large size PDP devices. It has 1.1 mm thick and 1.8 mm thick as the standard thickness. Toshiba Tangaroi (Drill bit manufacturer for PWB manufacturing) Nomura Principal Finance had 70% of the stakes. The company will be de-listed from The Tokyo Stock Exchange MarketShowa Denko (Major chemical company) Re-started the domestic production of the aluminum base hard discs to cover the strong demand of desktop PCs. 1.4 million discs per month. Kyushu Electric Power (Electric power supplier) Developed a new flexible display panel with hybrid LCD mechanisms for the large size displays.Toshiba (Major electronics company) Will increase the manufacturing capacity of the 1.8" hard disc drive to 600 thousand units per month. Toshiba expect the market size 24 million units by 2006.Oki Cable (Middle class cable manufacturer) Commercialized a new flame-retardant flat cable "Eco Oki Flex" without PVC insulation to reduce the duty on the environment. Mitsubishi Chemical (Major chemical company) Started the business of optical filter materials for PDP devices. The newly developed material provides a higher contrast quality. The material was already used for PDP TV in this summer.Kyoritsu Elex (Substrate material manufacturer) Developed a new alumina substrate for the SMT assembling of LED components. The new material has a higher heat resistance and heat conductance.JVC (Major electronics company) Will terminate the production of video tapes in the U.S. by the end of Jan. 2004. The media business is moving to DVD or other digital products.Apic Yamada (Lead frame manufacturer) Will invest 260 million yen to expand the manufacturing capacity of the lead frame and the other components at its subsidiary in Thailand. Toyo Gosei (Plastic resin manufacturer) Unveiled a new UV curable acrylic resin for nano-scale 3D printed circuits. Elner (Major PWB manufacturer) Started the PWB supply for Sony’s play Station X instead of Play Station II which moved to overseas production this year. Fujitsu (Major electronics company) Made a prototype model of 100" PDP with 1 mm diameter plasma tube elements, which eliminate a large size glass substrate.Kuraray (Major plastic and fiber manufacturer) Will increase the manufacturing capacity of the heat resistant polyamide resin 40% from 2400 tons per year by the year 2005 to cover the strong demands of electronic and automobile applications.Sony (Major electronics company) Introduced a ten layer HDI printed circuit board for the new "Vio" notebook computer. The density of the PWB is almost double compared to the current circuit boards. Pioneer (Major electronics company) Will commercialize the new organic EL panel display with a phosphorescence material. It has a 4-times higher photo efficiency than traditional fluorescence materials. All original news items were written in Japanese. Volunteers are choosing the topics and translating to English for free delivery. We are not responsible for the accuracy of the news. Quick news is the first priority of the headlines, therefore, we can not eliminate all of the mistakes in the translations.