Mobile/Wireless
Domestic sales of digital music downloads jumped 41% on the year to Ñ75.5 billion ($699.5 million) in 2007, according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan. Music downloads to mobile phones rose 41% to Ñ68 billion. Downloads of song excerpts grew just 1%, while downloads of full-length songs soared 91%, and for the first time ever, annual sales of full-length downloads exceeded song excerpt downloads. The association believes there is still room for further growth as consumers replace their existing cellular phones with advanced newer models. Sales of music downloads to personal computers which can be transferred to portable audio players climbed 18%. But with the market for these players having plateaued, the growth rate for such downloads slowed from the previous year's 170%.
Semiconductors
Sony Corporation has announced that it plans to invest approximately Ñ22 billion ($205.2 million) to strengthen its mid- and large-size OLED (organic light-emitting diode) panel production technology. With this investment, Sony intends to accelerate the shift to mid- and large-size, high image quality OLED panels. Sony began researching this technology in 1994, and has since positioned OLED as a future next-generation display technology. Sony will also reinforce its TFT (thin film transistor) and EL (electroluminescent) layer coating processing facilities at Sony Mobile Display Corporation's Higashiura factory, and plans to implement this production technology during the fiscal year ending March 31, 2010.
Toshiba Corporation, Sony Corporation and Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEI) have formed a new joint venture for the production of high-performance semiconductors, including products for SCEI's PlayStation computer entertainment systems. The joint venture will start operations from April 1, 2008, at Sony Semiconductor Kyushu CorporationÆs (SCK) Nagasaki Technology Centre. Toshiba, Sony and SCEI will each take a 20% stake. Within the fiscal year ending March 31, 2008, Toshiba will acquire from Sony and SCK the 300mm wafer line installed in SCK's Nagasaki Technology Centre Fab2 for approximately Ñ90 billion, and make it available to the joint venture.
Toshiba Corporation and SanDisk Corporation will spend more than Ñ1.7 trillion ($15.7 billion) to build two chip factories to challenge Samsung Electronics. Toshiba will share the funding and output of one of the plants with SanDisk, a large maker of memory cards. The two companies are still in talks about splitting costs and production at the second one. The factories will be built in Iwate, northern Japan, and in Mie, near Osaka in the west of the country. They will be capable of making chips out of 150,000 to 200,000 silicon wafers a month, which will roughly double ToshibaÆs current output.
Sharp, which also makes liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions, is constructing the worldÆs biggest solar cell plant in western Japan. The plant will be dedicated primarily to thin-film solar cells and is expected to start operations by March 2010.
Tokyo Electron, a maker of semiconductor equipment, plans to start developing solar cell manufacturing equipment through a joint venture with Sharp in a bid to capitalise on the growing demand for clean energy. The two Japanese companies plan to establish a joint venture to develop production equipment for thin-film solar cells. Tokyo Electron will produce and sell the equipment starting in 2009. The technology is attractive because, due to scarcity, the price of silicon has rocketed to as much as $300-$350/kg. The joint venture will be capitalised at Ñ50 million ($500,000), with 51% held by Tokyo Electron and the remainder by Sharp. Sharp is set to boost output capacity for thin-film solar cells more than 10-fold this year, by investing Ñ22 billion in the technology.
Toshiba shares benefitted from the companyÆs decision to cut its losses and abolish the HD-DVD format after losing the support of key studios and retailers which prefer the Blu-ray technology backed by Sony. ToshibaÆs shares jumped 6.3% as analysts were pleased with the companyÆs promise to focus its resources on more promising businesses. Blu-ray accounts for 93% of next-generation DVD hardware sales in North America and Blu-ray recorders from Sony, Matsushita and Sharp made up about 96% of the Japanese market in the final quarter of last year, researcher BCN said. Nikko Citigroup raised its rating on Toshiba to ôbuy-high riskö from ôhold-high riskö while JPMorgan maintained an overweight rating, predicting the elimination of sales promotion costs would add Ñ30 billion ($279 million) to Toshiba's operating profit in the next business year starting April.
Telecommunications
NTT Communications Corporation plans to launch high-speed corporate data communications services connecting Japan and Russia, according to Nikkei. Using an undersea fiber-optic cable completed at the end of last year, NTT Communications will connect its data communications networks in Japan with Russian telecom company TransTeleCom's local fiber-optic networks in roughly 900 cities. Dedicated fiber-optic networks reduce the risk of corporate data leaks. NTT Communications will set up a Moscow representative office in March, which will be upgraded to a local unit this year. It is looking to win about 100 corporate clients.
In addition, KDDI Corporation plans to launch high-speed corporate data communications services connecting Japan and Russia as early as this summer. In addition to an existing undersea cable, KDDI is laying two new lines with leading Russian long-distance telecom provider Rostelecom. The lines will boost current transmission capacity a thousand-fold and help slash service fees by about 40% from existing levels, the Nikkei said.
Media, Entertainment and Gaming
Nintendo will ship a new exercise product called Wii Fit in the US starting in May. The product comes with a weight-and-motion sensing device called the Wii Balance Board. In the same month, Nintendo will launch a new online service in the US called WiiWare that will allow game publishers to distribute new titles over the Internet directly to users, instead of using discs. For games distributed over WiiWare, game makers won't need any approval from Nintendo, though they must get their games rated by an industry rating system. The announcements are part of a wave of innovations that were presented at the Game Developers Conference. Overall, computer and videogames generated $17.94 billion in hardware and software sales last year, up 43% from the prevoius year. Nintendo has sold 1.4 million copies of Wii Fit since it went on sale in Japan in early December. More than 10 independent developers are already working on titles that use the balance board. One of them, JapanÆs Namco Bandai Games, is adapting a skiing game for the US that it has already released in Japan under the name Family Ski.
Internet
Japan's social-networking site, Mixi, said it plans to establish a subsidiary in Shanghai to tap China's fast-growing internet market. The company believes China's internet population is increasing at a significant pace and its online-advertisement market is also growing. Internet users in China totalled 172 million in 2007, and is expected to reach 200 million by 2010. Mixi has not yet determined exactly what service it will launch in China. Mixi.jp is Japan's second most visited Web site after Yahoo Japan's portal site. It has 13 million users, or about 10% of the population, and gets 11.8 billion page visits a month. An analyst from Mizuho Securities thinks that Mixi might find it difficult to break into the Chinese social-networking market, just as overseas companies such as MySpace.com and Korea's Cyworld have had trouble establishing a foothold in Japan and the language barrier could prove to be one of the biggest issues. Moreover, China's social-networking sites, including 51.com, Tudou.com and Rox.com.cn, already have a large local following.
Korea
Telecommunications
Hanarotelecom announced that it has achieved an earnings turnaround for the year 2007. The company posted record-high revenues of W1.9 trillion ($2.0 billion), operating income of W80.9 billion and net income of W7.2 billion ($7.6 million). Revenue growth was driven by growth in the voice, hanaTV and corporate data segments. Operating income jumped 162.4% due to the efficient management of sales and marketing expenses.
Hanarotelecom also announced plans to increase the number of 100Mbps subscribers this year to prepare for the launch of IPTV, which will include real-time broadcasting services. The Company will roll out more various bundling products in addition to hanaSet. Hanaro recently launched hanaTV Season 2, offering personalised services with an enhanced user interface, and plans to offer differentiated contents and value-added services in order to improve the competitiveness of its IPTV services.
Mobile/Wireless
LG Electronics has launched its first AM OLED (organic light-emitting diode) phone, which allows users to enjoy picture quality with rich color. According to the company, it is the first strategic product to commercialise the AM OLED technology. AM OLED is 1,000 times as faster than the existing TFT-LCD (thin-film transistor-liquid crystal display) technology. It has a better resolution, contrast rate and color reproduction range. Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Nokia and Japanese makers competitively plan to launch AM OLED phones to differentiate their existing products. Although the expensive prices are still an obstacle on the spread, the competition is likely to result in lower prices.
SK Telecom has agreed to license mobile-television technology for its memory cards to US-based SanDisk Corporation. The two companies will also cooperate on joint projects. SK Telecom and SanDisk have developed a joint platform to record mobile-TV programs on SanDisk's memory cards, the Korean company said. SK Telecom will also provide SanDisk with technology to protect and deliver digital content.
Semiconductors
LDK Solar, a manufacturer of multicrystalline solar wafers, has signed an eight-year "Take or Pay" contract to supply Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI). Under the terms of the agreement, LDK Solar will deliver 450MW of multicrystalline solar wafers to HHI through 2015. HHI will make an advance payment, representing a portion of the contract value to LDK Solar.
Samsung Electronics was ordered to pay W11.5 billion ($12.1 million) for unfair business practices involving discounted payments to its suppliers. Two Samsung executives who disrupted the investigation were fined W20 million each. This is the biggest penalty that the Korea Fair Trade Commission has imposed on a wrong-doing company so far. According to the KFTC, Samsung set a cost saving target of W1.2 trillion in its information and communications division and applied a discount of 6.6% in the first half and 9.8% in the second half in 2003 when paying its research suppliers.
Internet
Korean information security company AhnLab has released a new online security service under the name of AhnLab Online Security (AOS). AOS allows safe internet transactions and protects user information on websites of banks, investment companies, online gaming sites, shopping malls and others firms that are sensitive to security issues. With one AOS installation, security functions such as keyboard security, firewall and anti-virus/spyware can all be used. Until now, users had to download three or four different security services when using online banking. AOS reduces such hassle through one installation. AOS is the first security service in Korea to satisfy the Financial Supervisory Service recommendations.
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