Dominique Numakura's Newsletter from Japan

JPCA Show 2005 (Part V) - Foreign companies

The last major topics during the JPCA Show 2005 were foreign exhibitors and visitors.

A lot of Asian circuit board manufacturers had their booths in the show. Major foreign circuit board manufacturers such as Samsung Electro Mechanics in Korea and Compeq in Taiwan had big booths displaying their latest products including multi-layer rigid/flex. Their technologies have been becoming close to the similar levels as the leading companies in Japan, and many people were visiting these booths to check the technology levels. There were also many middle class Asian circuit board manufacturers in the exhibition. They were not having many visitors. But they have Japanese staffs or Japanese agents. They have been making their foot print in the Japanese market. I could not find many American or European PWB manufacturers in the show.  I found only one German circuit board manufacturer Ruwel in a small booth.

Probably, there were several thousand foreign visitors during the three days exhibition. It is not easy to identify the nationalities of the visitors by only their faces, but I could recognize the nationalities when they spoke to each other.  I could recognize many Korean people and Taiwanese people. I also recognized Chinese and Singaporean English. There were not many visitors from North America and Europe other than exhibitors. It looked like the numbers of the visitors have been representing the business balance in the world. Growing countries were sending more engineers to get the technical information from the Japanese manufacturers.

A surprise for me was that many Japanese material suppliers and equipment suppliers had Korean speakers and Chinese speakers in their booths. These Japanese companies were very aggressive to get the business from the growing countries.

Another interesting activity during exhibition was recruiting of the Japanese engineers. Most of the meetings were held behind the booths. Probably, the major customers were new Chinese PWB and flex circuit manufacturers.  Currently, it looked like a seller’s market.

It could be true that the manufacturing of PWB is moving to the Asian countries from North America, Europe and Japan. But Japan is still keeping the major part of the high-end area. Japanese manufacturers are also keeping a leading position of the material supply and manufacturing equipment. The JPCA Show will keep the position of the world’s largest exhibition of the circuit board industry for next several years.

Dominique Numakura

Headlines of the week

Mitsubishi Plastic (Major plastic resin supplier)
Commercialized three types of lead-free PVC (Poly vinyl chloride) boards for the manufacturing equipment of Semiconductors and LCD.

Sharp (Major electronics company in Japan)
Introduced a 0.5 mm pitch stack up technology for the 3D SiP (System in Package) of the digital camera applications. The new package reduced the SMT space 42%.

Ube Materials (Subsidiary of Ube Industry)
Has developed a new energy saving type LCD introducing the nano meter level particles of Mg and Ca.

Arm Denshi (Major PWB prototype shop in Japan)
Expects the record income of 6 hundred million yens, a 29% increase for the fiscal year ending May 2005.  The new plant started the operation in May.

ShinEtsu Chemical (Major supplier of flexible laminates)
Has developed a new flexible laminate with a 9 micron copper foil by lamination process. The new laminate could be competitive against the sputtering process.

Kyocera SLC (Major circuit board manufacturer in Japan)
Started the operation of the new PWB plant in Kyoto. The new plant will produce the world’s highest class HDI substrates with a large volume.

Nikko Materials (Major copper foil supplier in Japan)
Will invest 3.6 billion yens for the new manufacturing facilities of the adhesiveless flexible laminates for the COF applications. The total manufacturing capacity will be 100 k square meters per month in Sep. 2006.

Arm Denshi (Major PWB prototype shop in Japan)
Had a business alliance with Chip One Stop for the sales of the circuit boards through the internet,

Furukawa Electric (Major cable manufacturer in Japan)
Commercialized a new re-flow type soldering furnace "Saramanda XNZ-725PT" for the lead-free soldering.

Dai Nippon Printing (Major printing company in Japan)
Commercialized a new fine lead frame with 125 micron pitch inner leads introducing new etching & plating process.

EMS (PWB manufacturer in Japan)
Commercialized a set of standard test circuit boards for the evaluation of the lead-free soldering process. The customers do not need to generate expensive test patterns.

Japan Gore Tex (LCP sheet manufacturer in Japan)
Will increase the manufacturing capacity of 175 and 225 micron thick LCP sheets as the stiffener materials of the flexible circuits in this year.

Asahi Kasei (Major chemical company in Japan)
Developed a new dust protection film for the photo masks of the next generation LCD manufacturing process.

Taiyo Denki Sangyo (Tool manufacturer in Japan)
Commercialized a new soldering tool "RX-802AS" for the lead-free soldering. It gets 350 degree C in 6 seconds and keeps it stable.

Mitsubishi Plastic (Major plastic supplier in Japan)
Developed a new laminate of PEEK film and stainless steel sheet for??