Dominique Numakura’s Newsletter from Japan
Mar 26, 2004
Japan Semiconductor grew 26.8% in 2003. The Semiconductor Industry News (SIN), a major weekly industry newspaper in Japan was reporting its market analysis regarding the booming semiconductor industry in Japan. Japan’s semiconductor market had a remarkable growth (26.8%) in 2003 compared to the other areas. (Asia Pacific: 21.6%, Europe: 16.4%, U.S.A.: 2.2%) SIN was analyzing that the major growth was made by the consumer products such as digital cameras, cellular phones and flat panel TVs. They consume a huge number of CCD, CMOS for micro camera modules and driver IC devices for displays. All of the devices had a smaller market than 1 billion dollars several years ago. But they had a 5 to 7 billion dollars market last year for each device. SIN says that Japanese manufacturers will keep a very high market share and high growth rates for these devices in the next few years. SIN expects each of the devices will make a 10 billion dollar market in the next few years. By the way, these devices are all mounted and wired on the high density flexible circuits directly or indirectly. It is the reason I have been forecasting a high growth rate of high density flexible circuits in the next 5 years. Dominique Numakura Headline News Mitsubishi Chemical Media (Memory material supplier) Developed a new photo sensitive color element material for the new 16 times re-writable DVD discs. Nippon Steel Chemical (Major material supplier for flexible circuits) Started the construction of the new plant in Kyushu for the adhesiveless laminates, “Espanex”. The total capacity will be 8.5 million square meters by the end of 2005. Matsushita Electronic Component (Major component manufacturer) Sold its tantalum capacitor business to Nichicon, the major capacitance manufacturer in Japan. Matsushita Electric Works(The largest laminate manufacturer for the PWBs) Announced a 7 to 15% price increase of laminate materials for the PWB customers from April 1st to cover the recent rising cost of the raw materials. Nippon Zeon (Chemical company in Japan) Will increase the manufacturing capacity of its strategic transparent resin “Cyclo-olefin polymer (COP)” to 10,000 tons per year for the portable electronics. Kyocera Chemical (Organic electronic material supplier) Will expand the material business of flexible circuits. The company newly commercialized the adhesive base materials, which have an equivalent heat resistance as ahdesiveless laminates. Nittobo (Major glass fiber supplier) 3Will increase the price of glass fiber of the PWB materials 20% from April 1st to improve the finances. Currently the supply is very tight because of the quick business recovery in the last several months. Toshiba (Major electronics company) Made a prototype fuel cell for a small size notebook computer. It will be commercialized by March, 2005. Oki Electric (Major electronics company) Will expand the ENS business 3 times larger to 30 billion Yen by 2006. The company concentrates the EMS business in niche but high margin areas. Bridgestone (Major tire manufacturer) Developed a new optical filter for PDP TV. The weight of the new filter is one tenth compared to traditional devices. It will reduce the weight of the flat TV about 10%. CMK (The largest PWB manufacturer) Will increase the manufacturing capacity of multi-layer rigid/flex to 17,000 square meters per month. 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.
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