Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

EPTE Newsletter from Japan - The Ever Evolving Flat Panel Display Market

Topics of the Week

The flat panel display (FPD) segment is a major contributor relative to sales and profits for the electronics industry, and it should continue to flourish and maintain its favorable position as the portfolio leader for at least another decade.  Several display technologies making it to the commercial markets have individually generated their own niches during the last ten years. However, several industry media groups in Japan have reported some companies have a new direction for their products in the display industry.

LCDs (Liquid Crystal Display) are the oldest technology and have broad applications. The technical capabilities are still progressing, and LCDs will be a major player in this expanding industry for at least another decade.  One headache manufacturers endure is maintaining profit margins.  Although sales are quite robust, falling prices have eaten away at the bottom line for most manufacturers.

PDPs (Plasma Display Panel) have the lion share of the market for large size TV displays due in part to their cost performances compared to LCD panels. However, LCD manufacturers are improving their cost performances and now enjoy the highest market share for flat TV's larger than 40".   This year, Sharp unveiled a 108" LCD TV, and demonstrated its capabilities against a PDP.  Industry experts believe the PDP segment cannot survive facing this new competition.

Conversely, industry experts predict the OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) technology will have an explosive growth in the near future.  In the past, OLED technology was used in small display applications such as sub displays for cellular phones; however, recent technological advances allow the enlarging of the display sizes and color qualities for older OLED technologies.  Major manufacturers such as Sony and Canon believe that OLED technology could be the predominant device for larger size flat panel displays and predict an 800 billion yen (7 billion US$) market in the next 3 years.  Some manufacturers are planning to build huge manufacturing plants for OLED panels in the near future.

A technology that has been an R&D project for a long time is electronic paper technology.  There has been significant progress, and manufacturers announced commercialized applications for electronic books, advertising boards, wrist watches, etc. earmarked for product launch this year. The color type e-paper will be available at the end of this year, or next year.

FED (Field Emission Display) was developed as the alternative technology to LCD technology for the next generation flat panel TVs. Toshiba and Canon planned to join forces and begin a joint venture aimed at constructing a large manufacturing plant and commercially produce the new display panels. Unfortunately, there is a patent issue with an American company, and Toshiba decided to step away from the project. Cannon has stated its intentions to move forward alone with the project; however, industry rumors suggest the project will be postponed or canceled.

The display technology segments listed above are retooling, evolving, and changing direction.  The players in the industry can't allow the grass to grow under their feet, and must pay great attention to new industry trends and adapt as needed; otherwise, they may find themselves at the bottom of the barrel. One thing is certain in this industry: the only thing constant is change.

Dominique Numakura, DKN Research (dnumakura@dknresearch.com)

Headlines of the week

1.      Mektron (Major flexible circuit manufacturer in Japan) 3/7

Will invest 16 billion yens for the new manufacturing equipment in the fiscal year of 2007. Mektron plans to expand the assembling business aggressively.

2.      Sony (Major electronics company in Japan) 3/10

Will recycle the used CDs as the molding material of the housing of the other electronic products.

3.      Harima Kasei (Soldering material supplier in Japan) 3/12

Will open a new facility in Czech for the manufacturing and marketing of lead-free soldering materials.

4.      Panasonic (Major electronics company in Japan) 3/13

Plans to supply 2 million units of PDP TV in the European market this year expecting 50% market share.

5.      Asahi Kasei (Major chemical company in Japan) 3/13

Has developed the world smallest 3D electronic compass "AK8973S" (2.5 x 2.5 x 0.5 mm) introducing CSP.

6.      Nippon Densan Sankyo (Equipment manufacturer in Japan) 3/13

Has developed a large size conveyor robot for the glass substrates of the 10G LCD manufacturing lines. It has 5400 mm stroke.

7.      Showa Denko (Major chemical company) 3/14

Will invest 3.5 billion yens to increase the manufacturing capacity of the GaN based LED to 100 million units per month from 30 million units.

8.      PED (Component supplier in Japan) 3/14

Has commercialized the world smallest SMT type aluminum capacitor series "SP-Cap".  Size: 6.0 x 3.2 x 1.9 mm.

9.      Matsushita Electric Works (Major PWB material supplier) 3/14

Has been expanding the business of halogen free materials. It targets 60% share of the whole business by 2010.

10.  Pioneer (Major electronics company in Japan) 3/14

Has reduced the forecast of the fiscal year ending Mar. 2007 to 800 billion yen from 820 billion yen because of serious price down of PDP TV in North America and severe competition in Europe.

11.   Fujitsu (Major electronics company in Japan) 3/14

Has developed a new reliable 2.5" hard disc drive for industrial and automobile equipment. The new drive survives in a broad temperature range (-30C to +85C) and under a 300G mechanical shock.

12.  Alps Electric (Major component supplier in Japan) 3/15

Will terminate the business of magnetic head devices of the disc drives. The division will be sold to TDK in Japan.

13.  Seiko Epson (Major electronics company in Japan) 3/15

Will withdraw from the small and middle size LCD markets to improve the finance of the display business.

14.  Hirose Electric (Major connector supplier in Japan) 3/15

Will terminate the organic EL material business to improve the finance. The business was making much larger loss than revenue in the last 10 years.

15.  Fujitsu (Major electronics company in Japan) 3/15

Will invest 52 billion yens in Thailand to triple the manufacturing capacity of the 2.5" disc drives.

16.  ITRI (Taiwan) 3/13

Has opened a new laboratory to develop the technologies of flexible electronics including displays and solar cells.

17.  Kyocera Elco (Component supplier in Japan) 3/16

Has rolled out a new low height ZIF connector series "6293 Series" (0.85 mm high) with 0.3 mm pitch for the connection of the high-density flexible circuits.

Interesting literature from the packaging industry

Articles of DKN Research

1.  "2006 Global Material Projection for Flex Circuit" DKN Research, October, 2006. http://www.dknresearch.com/Products.html

2. "Introduction for the Printed Circuit Boards of Car Electronics, Flexible Circuits", (Japanese only), Dominique Numakura, Nikkan Kogyo Shinbun, June, 2006, 2400 yens.

3. "The latest semiconductor package, Part XXI, Teardown Analysis of FDD, CD Drive", Dominique Numakura, Electronics Packaging Technology, January, 2007 

4. "Five Year Projection of the Global Flexible Circuit Market" Robert Turunen, Dominique Numakura and James J. Hickman, The Board Authority, Volume 7, August, 2006

5. "Technical Trends and Market Projection of the Materials for the Flexible Circuits", (Japanese only) Dominique Numakura, Denshi Zairyo, October, 2006

6. "Leading Edge Material and Application of Polyimide (Materials for the Advance Flexible Circuits)", Dominique Numakura, CMC publication, August, 2006

7. "Business Trends and Technology Trends of the HDI Flexible Circuits -

Roadmap for the Ultra High-Density Advanced Flexible Circuits", Dominique Numakura, KPCA, October 31, 2006

From the Major Industry Magazines

1. "Flex-Based Interconnection Structures for High-Speed Applications", Joseph Fjelstad, CircuiTree, February, 2007.

2. "Organic and Printed Electronics: The Next Big Things?", Daniel Gamota and Jie Zhang, Circuits Assembly, February, 2007.

3. "First Article Inspection: Understanding the Problems", Greg Ross, SMT, February, 2007

4. "The PCB Design Outsource Proposition. Is outsourcing the right solution for your company?", Joseph Zaccari, Printed Circuit Design & Manufacturing, February, 2007.

5. "Fluxless Wafer Bumping by Electron Attachment", Christine Dong, Richard Patrick, Eugene Kawacki and Gregory Arslanian, Advanced Packaging, January/February, 2007

6. "From Chips to Systems via Packaging - A Comparison of IBM's Mainframe Servers", Hubert Harrer, George A. Katopis and Wiren Becker, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine, 4th Quarter, 2006

7. "Under the Hood-Latest DESIGN GEMS Unearthed",  presented by EE Times and techonline, December 2006