Dominique Numakura's Newsletter from Japan

Asian Electronics slowdown

As I have been reporting recently, the Asian electronics industry has been slowing down continuously in recent months.

The September shipment of the large size LCD panels in Taiwan increased 12% from the previous month.  Probably, it could be a small rebound for the Christmas sale. Most of the people in the industry do not expect a remarkable rebound in the next half-year.

There are too many market inventories of notebook computers in the U.S. and Japan. The display manufacturers in Asia have been expanding the production capacities aggressively in the last two years. But the demands of PC did not grow very much, therefore their capacities are much larger than the market demands, right now. There is another headache for the display manufacturers. The demands of cellular phones in Asia have been becoming weaker continuously. The market demands of the flat panel TV are still growing, but they can not fill the demand declines of the PC and cellular phones. 

It is not only display manufacturers, but also flex circuit manufacturers. The display manufacturers have been the major customers for the flexible circuit manufacturers. The Taiwanese flexible circuit manufacturers have been keeping a plus growth of the shipments compared to the previous year. But the growth rates became smaller remarkably. It is a very difficult situation to forecast the flexible circuit business exactly in Asia. The pessimistic people in the industry say the demands do not come back before the second half of 2005.  It will be realistic, if we can not see a rebounding sign in the next two months.

Dominique Numakura

Headline News,   

Asahi Kasei Chemical (Major fine chemical supplier in Japan)
Will double the manufacturing capacity of acrylic sheets in Korea, to 12,000 tons per year to cover the growing demands of LCD devices.

LCD panel manufacturers (in Taiwan)
Shipped 4.69 million large size LCD panels in September. It is the first increase from the previous month (+12%) in the last four months. The price stayed in the low level.

Sharp (Major electronics company in Japan)
Will commercialize a new PDA that has a 4 GB micro disc drive in November.

JSR (Fine chemical supplier in Japan)
Will start the second construction to expand the manufacturing capacity of the coloring resists for the LCD devices at Ochang Plant in Korea.
 
Idemitsu (Major petroleum company in Japan)
Developed a new green coloring material for the organic ELD devices. The new material provides a higher efficiency with a longer life.

Omron (Major component supplier in Japan)
Developed a new optical guide board for the LCD of the cellular phones. The new boards make the display modules to half thickness.

Toyo Ink (Major ink material supplier in Japan)
Developed new functional ultra fine particles. The acrylic resin base particles could be a suitable material as the dispersion regent of the LCD devices.  

TDK (Major component supplier in Japan)
Co-developed a new active–matrix type organic EL display for the mobile electronics.

Mitsubishi Electric (Major electronics company in Japan)
Will commercialize a new small size CCD camera with 4 million pixels for the cellular phone applications.

Pioneer (Major electronics company in Japan)
Established the volume production of the 2.4” active full color OELD for the cellular phones.

JUKI (Mounting machine supplier for the PWB  assembling)
Commercialized a new surface-mounting machine for mixed components of IC bare chips and discrete passive components. The new machine can reduce the mounting  time and cost remarkably.

Dai-Nippon Printing (Major printing company in Japan)
Started the volume production of the thin build-up circuit boards with the core-less technology. The company will start the volume production of High per B2it boards   in the spring of 2005.

Shinko Electric (Major IC packaging material supplier in Japan)
Developed the world’s smallest packaging technology (10 x 10 x 1.3 mm, 0.33 grams) for the RFID reader/writer modules.
 
Oki Electric and Oki Cable (Japan)
Co-developed a new hybrid heat sink material with ultra thin copper foils for the portable electronics.

Toray Engineering (Equipment manufacturer for the packaging)
Forecast more than 30% revenue increase for the bonding machines for COF and relating applications in this year.
 
Shindo Denshi (Major TAB manufacturer in Japan)
Will start the operation of the second line of the Naka Plant. The COF substrate materials will be the main products of the new line.

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.