Hardware
Victor Co, which will form a holding company with Kenwood Corp in October, plans to increase its video-camera shipments by 10% this fiscal year. Victor, the maker of JVC-brand electronics, is targeting shipments of 3.55 million video cameras in the year ending March 2009, up from 3.2 million in the previous 12 months. Victor and Kenwood will form a holding company on October 1 to focus on car and audio electronics.
SonyÆs chairman Howard Stringer said the company's top priority is to restore profitability at the its television and gaming divisions. Stringer, 66, made the comment at Sony's annual shareholder meeting in Tokyo. The company is scheduled to announce its next mid-term business plan on June 26. Sony said when it reported earnings in mid-May that profits at the electronics division, which makes Bravia TVs and Cyber-shot cameras, will fall this year as the stronger yen erodes the value of its exports. Tokyo-based Sony forecast net income will drop 22% to Ñ290 billion ($2.69 billion) in the year that started April 1, matching the median estimate of five analysts in a Bloomberg survey.
Sony also projects it will sell 10 million PlayStation 3 machines and 9 million PlayStation 2s this year. That means the company may lose its ranking as the world's largest maker of home video-game consoles because Kyoto-based Nintendo has projected it will sell 25 million Wii players this year. Meanwhile, a motion by some shareholders for full disclosure of every board member's salary and retirement package was defeated. Sony only publishes managers' combined salary and retirement payments without giving a breakdown.
Data storage company SanDisk has collaborated with Toshiba to develop and manufacture rewriteable 3D memory chips. Both companies will contribute to and cross-license the technology related to 3D chips. SanDisk will also receive certain payments from Toshiba for licensing its intellectual property. SanDisk and Toshiba have collaborated in NAND flash for many years, and are currently shipping their 43nm NAND devices. However, they have decided to cease production at their FlashVision joint venture in Japan, which manages part of the NAND flash-memory fabrication on 200-mm wafer lines.
Mobile/wireless
More Japanese firms are seeking to join the growing market for electronic books packaged for delivery to cell phones. The overall market for e-books grew some 1.7-fold to roughly Ñ30 billion ($277.8 million) in fiscal 2007. Content for cell phones accounted for more than 70% of that total. Helping to fuel the market was the introduction of wireless service plans with cheap, fixed fees for packet communications. Younger consumers are driving the demand and companies that provide content are developing more products, like youth-oriented manga. Game software company Koei is putting together a collection of light novels or novels with anime illustrations.
Huawei Technologies is scheduled to launch an Internet-capable H11HW mobile phone in the middle of June in Japan, marking its debut in the Japanese market. Being able to support a data transfer speed of 3.6 megabit per second, the new mobile phone will be sold by Tokyo-based Japanese carrier Emobile. In addition to features like blue tooth, Web browser, music player and camera, the mobile phone will give users access to videophone services launched by Emobile.
Semiconductors
Renesas Technology Corp, a joint venture between Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric, has developed a way to vastly reduce the sludge that remains after wastewater has been treated at semiconductor plants. The semiconductor industry uses a cocktail of toxic chemicals in the chip-making process and some ends up in the industrial wastewater. Chipmakers have made significant progress treating the wastewater, but the bacteria they use in the treatment tanks tend to die and accumulate as sludge. With the technique developed by Renesas, micro bubbles are jetted into the tank, providing the bacteria with ample oxygen and keeping them alive. Micro bubbles last long enough to reach bacteria even deep inside the tank.
Telecommunications
NTT DoCoMo has agreed to take a 30% stake in TM International (Bangladesh) through the purchase of roughly Ñ37 billion ($342 million) worth of shares of the third-largest cellular service provider in Bangladesh. TMIB, a joint venture between Telekom Malaysia and Bangladeshi conglomerate A.K. Khan & Co, operates cell phone service under the Aktel brand. With about 7.4 million subscriptions, TMIB has a 19% share of Bangladesh's cell phone market, which has been growing slightly faster than 60% a year. The nation of 150 million people had 38.3 million cellular service contracts as of March 31, 2008. DoCoMo will purchase all of A.K. Khan group's TMIB shareholdings by the end of this year.
Korea
Telecommunications
SK Telecom is interested in buying a stake in China Telecom Corporation, according to SK TelecomÆs president, So Jin Woo. SK Telecom would like to team up with China Telecom if conditions are ripe. The company will take every chance of expanding its business. In fact, China TelecomÆs chairman, Wang Xiaochu, revealed the company's plan to lure a strategic investor soon after China Telecom announced details of its proposal to acquire the CDMA network from China Unicom.
Internet
Prosecutors have arrested the heads of five top Internet service providers on allegations of facilitating illegal distribution of copyrighted movies. The five companies claim the probe is politically-motivated attempt to thwart anti-government protests. The arrested include Moon Yong-shik, head of online service provider Nowcom, and four other heads of major Internet service operators for allegedly instigating the violation of online copyright laws. Moon and the other suspects allegedly gave 10% of the charges they received from downloaders to their top customers.
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