Dominique Numakura's Newsletter from Japan

I am losing my colleagues in the U.S.

I had another Dear John Letter from my colleague in the U.S. recently. She was making materials for the high end flexible circuits. Unfortunately, I could not give her good business in the last few years because of the slow economy. Fortunately for her, she had a new friend in Asia, and she decided to close her home in the U.S. and move to Asia.

I can not remember how many friends I lost in the U.S. after the IT bubble economy at the end of 20th Century. They were material companies, machine companies, circuit etchers, device manufacturers, assemblers, etc. They enjoyed the business together while the businesses were booming. Unfortunately, they did not have any good ideas as to how to keep their businesses in the U.S. under the slow economy. They were just waiting out the rebounds of the business.  But the businesses did not come back in the U.S. for a long time, and the companies could not be patient that long. They changed their minds and they found the new business booming in Asia, and they do not have any more interests about the American market.

It may be right that the American market is not attractive to the traditional electronics businesses other than end products. However, I believe there are still many opportunities we can create with new ideas in the U.S. Fortunately, I still have many creative friends in the U.S., and we have been generating new technologies and new business opportunities together. We will stay in the U.S. but we will work globally for the valuable technologies.  I hope more people will join our club.

Dominique Numakura

Headline News,   

Epson (Major electronics company in Japan)
Has improved the contrasts of the high temperature poly-TFT LCD more than 50%.

Yumex (Light source manufacturer for LCD and PDP)
Will expand the business to the projector markets. It will start the supply of the products to Texas Instrument in 2005.

SamSung SDI (Major display manufacturer in Korea)
Developed a new vacuumed evaporation/depositing system for the organic EL displays. Currently, the Korean manufacturers were importing the equipment from Japan.
 
Dai-Nippon Screen (Equipment manufacturer in Japan)
Co-developed a new high speed photolithography process with the Dutch company, ASML Holdings. The new system can process one hundred fifty 12" wafers per min.

Three Bond (Adhesive material manufacturer in Japan)
Commercialized a new transparent resin "TB3078 Series" as the glue for optical devices.  The resin is supplied by liquid and cured by UV ray.

Zuken (Soft ware vendor for printed circuit design)
Has received an order of the total design management system including analysis and procurement for all kinds of electronic circuits.

Sumitomo Bakelite (Major PCB material supplier in Japan) 
Announced the price increase of phenol resin and other materials from July 10.

SEAJ (Japan)
Expected that the sales of the semiconductor manufacturing equipment would slow down in 2005. 2004 could be the peak. 

KDDI (Telephone company in Japan)
Will co-develop the micro size fuel cells for the cellular phones with Hitachi and Toshiba by 2007.

NTT (The largest telephone company in Japan)
Has been promoting its new laser memory device "Info Mica" for the AV applications. A stamp size device has 10G bites memory capacity, what is enough for a 3 hours movie.

Nippon Chemical Industry (Chemical etching solution supplier in Japan)
Will increase the manufacturing capacity of the high purity phosphoric acid for the etching process of LCD devices 50% to 60 thousand tons per year.

JP Tech (Equipment manufacturer in Japan)
Will commercialize an automatic robot "Hari Robo HR-85" for the lamination of polarization films of LCD devices and relating devices. The robot has +/- 0.05 mm alignment accuracy.

Gold Industries (Material supplier in Japan)
Will invest 400 million Yen to increase the capacity to supply taped packaged materials for CSP and WLP devices.

Sumitomo Metal Mining (Flexible laminate manufacturer)
Will increase the manufacturing capacity of adhesiveless flexible laminates made by a sputtering/plating process to 4 million square meters per year by 2006.

Nippon Steel Chemical (Major flexible laminate supplier in Japan)
Has been promoting the new adhesiveless which has copper foil and stainless steel foil for the disc drive applications.

Omron (Major component manufacturer in Japan)
Has developed a new optical cable made of acrylic resin for high speed internal transmission of the portable electronics.  More than one G bits/second.

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.