Price of Cellular Phone Color Panels Bottom Out
Picvue Receives 100,000-unit Order for Cellular Phone Color Panels
OEL Display Activities
Announcements of New Image Sensors for Cellular Phones
Japanese Semiconductor Manufacturers to Increase Production of W-CSP
Futaba Showcases FED Panel Based on Carbon Nano Tube
Chinese Firm Showcases 2.4GB 1-inch HDD
10 Japanese Semiconductor Material Suppliers to Set up Consortium

Prices of cellular phone color panels are bottoming out, says Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun on February 12, 2003. With European and the U.S. handsets beginning to adopt color screens, the supply of color LCD panels has become tight.

Prices of LCD panels for cellular phones have been falling for two years because of chronic oversupply. The oversupply was caused by many LCD suppliers converting their last generation production lines to produce small size LCDs and the coinciding cellular phone recession worldwide.

Prices of two-inch color TFT LCD (160 x 210 dots) quoted to large volume users by manufacturers such as Sharp and Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology are at around 3300 – 3500 yen ($27.5-$29 @ yen 120/$US 1) including peripheral devices such as driver ICs and LEDs. Prices are now half of what they were two years ago.

However, demand for color screens for the spring 2003 models have increased. Companies such as Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology say that they cannot keep up with demand even with expanded capacity. LCD manufacturers, whose profitability worsened due to the continuous price decline of their LCDs over the past two years, no longer have the muscle power to absorb rising prices of peripheral devices such as driver ICs and polarizers. Thus they are not easily giving in to downward price pressure from handset manufacturers. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

Picvue of Taiwan received an order for color STN LCD panels for cellular phones from a major South Korean handset vendor, Commercial Times reported on February 21, 2003. Picvue will begin delivery in March 2003. Starting from the beginning of 2003, color screen demand for cellular phones is increasing globally.

The world’s largest cellular phone vendor, Nokia predicts that 450 million handsets will be sold in 2003, with about half being color screen handsets.

Picvue completed construction of a color STN LCD manufacturing fab in the first half 2002. The substrate size is 470 mm x 370 mm. The company hopes to be in the black this year from increased orders for color LCD panels.

In December 2002, Economic Daily reports that it, too, forecasts that 40-50 percent of the global cellular phones to be equipped with color screen in 2003. Two other Taiwanese LCD suppliers, AU Optronics and Chi-Mei are also planning to get into the cellular phone color LCD market. The same source says 2-inch STN LCDs for cellular phones were traded for $15-$18, where as the same size TFT LCDs were traded for $25-$30.

Korea Economic Daily reported on February 25, 2003 that Samsung SDI, Seiko Epson and Philips are all planning to expand output of color LCDs for cellular phones soon. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

RiTdisplay of Taiwan received orders for OEL (Organic Electroluminescent) displays for cellular phone sub-displays from Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, both of South Korea. RiTdisplay’s shipment to Korea are expected to begin soon and the company is going to ship 5 million OEL panels to Korea this year.

The Taiwanese OEL panel manufacturer received an order for four million units of full color passive matrix OEL panels from Motorola in late 2002. The panels will be used as sub-display of Motorola’s clamshell style handsets. RiTdisplay shipped about 700,000 to 800,000 OEL panels in 2002.

Beijing Visonox Technology developed a full color OEL display for the first time in China through cooperation with Tsinghua University. The .28-inch panel has 64 x 64 dots. The company plans to market the new device to home appliances and mobile terminals.

OSRAM Opto Semiconductor of Germany and Three Five Systems (TFS) of the U.S. announced their collaboration on PLED (Polymer Light Emitting Display). TFS will market OSRAM’s PLEDs and will provide design engineering service for PLEDs to system manufacturers.

Samsung SDI of South Korea is allying with a U.S. startup Vitex System in development of thin and light weight OEL displays.

Eastman Kodak gave non-exclusive license of its OEL technologies to Samsung NEC Mobile Displays on February 26, 2003. The license applies to holding companies (Samsung and NEC) of the Korea Japan joint venture. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

Sanyo Electric of Japan announced a 310,000-pixel CCD camera module for cellular phones, ITGT99268M-ST, on February 18, 2003. The new module measures 12.9 mm x 9.9 mm x 6.5 mm. Its power consumption is 135mW at 15 frames per second. The optical size of the CCD is 1/7-inch, with pixel pitch being 3.3 micron. The module, which integrated a DC-DC converter, will be available on sample in April 2003 for 9,000 yen ($75 @ yen 120/$US 1). Sanyo Electric plans to begin mass production of the component in August 2003. Sanyo uses a frame transfer method for its CCDs. See a picture at: http://www.zdnet.co.jp/mobile/0302/18/n_ccd.html

Micron of the U.S. announced a 310,000-pixel CMOS sensor and a CMOS sensor module for cellular phone application, MI-343 and MI-SOC-343, which has embedded signal processing circuit, on February 17, 2003. The power consumptions are 60mW for the MI-343 and 100mW for MI-SOC-343 at 15 frames per second. The size of the optics is ¼-inch with pixel pitch being 5.6 micron.

According to Sanyo’s spokesperson, demand remains greater than the supply for camera handset image sensor modules, even with many device manufacturers entering into the market. Shortage of image sensor modules for cellular phone application is expected to continue throughout the year. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

Japanese Semiconductor manufacturers are expanding output of W-CSP (Wafer Level Chip Size Package).

Seiko Epson is going to produce power source ICs for cellular phones using W-CSP technology. It plans to begin production with 0.6 micron process on 6-inch wafers this summer.

Oki Electric has been producing its devices using W-CSP technology at its two plants in Japan, Hachioji Plant and Tama Oki Electric Plant. The company is using W-CSP packaging technology for its sound source ICs. Oki Electric’s current process capacity is 2,500 6-inch wafers and 5,000 8-inch wafers a month. Oki Electric plans to bolster its output capacity to 5,000 6-inch wafers and 10,000 8-inch wafers a month before the end of March 2004. As the initial phase of production increases, Oki Electric will invest 100 million yen ($833,333 @ yen 120/$US 1) to bring up the capacity of the 8-inch wafer line to 8,000 wafers a month before the end of March 2003. Oki Electric jointly developed its W-CSP expertise with Casio. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

In nano tech 2003, which was held from February 26 to 28, 2003 in Makuhari Japan, Futaba Corp. showcased a FED panel which uses a carbon nano tube (CNT) as its electronic source. It is the first time Futaba revealed a FED panel based on internally-developed CNT, although it exhibited a 8-inch FED panel using a metal circular cone-shaped electronic source. The showcased CNT FED display was made by tiling 10 16 x 16 pixel panels. The pixel size is 4 mm x 3 mm with pixel pitch being 2mm. Brightness is close to 1000cd/m2, according to Futaba’s booth attendant. Voltage applied to cathode is 200V. The power consumption of the panel is 7W. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

China GS Microdrive Inc. of China showcased a 1-inch HDD with 2.4GB capacity at 2003 China International Information Technology Exhibition reported a web-based Japanese trade journal on February 28, 2003. See the previous TAS note Chinese Firm Manufactures 1-inch HDD, from January 28, 2003.

GS Microdrive began production from February 27, 2003 in its factory in Guiyang city in Guizhou province, China. The company began sampling immediately with a plan to produce 150,000 units or more a month by September 2003. It plans to produce 1.5 million units before December 2003. Initially GS Microdrive will produce them for OEMs targeting Taiwan, China, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia. As a second phase, the company will target the device to Japanese and the U.S. OEMs. The Chinese firm plans to market the new HDD under its own brand as well as a recording media for digital still cameras and MP3 players. GS Microdrive’s Magicstor HDD is expected to retail for $230 – $250. OEM prices will be at around $150, the company says.

GS Microdrive demonstrated the Magicstor by replaying images stored in the Magicstor on PC or taking still images using the device as a storage media of a digital still camera. The surface recording density is 30Gbit/inch2. Rotational speed of the media is 4200rpm, with data transfer speed being 3.6MBytes/sec~7.1Mbytes/sec. Power consumption is 250mW for writing in and 18mW for standby. The company sources the head, media and motor from Japanese device manufacturers.

The company plans to introduce HDD’s with larger capacities in the future. It plans to announce a 3.6GB product in September 2003 and a 4.7GB HDD at the end of 2003. GS Microdrive is also developing a 1-inch size HDD to be incorporated into cellular phones. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]

Ten Japanese semiconductor material suppliers are going to establish a consortium to develop the next generation semiconductor materials. CASMAT: Consortium for Advanced Semiconductor Materials and Related Technologies will be formed on April 1, 2003. Members of the new consortium are JSR, Sumitomo Chemical, Sumitomo Bakelite, Sekisui Chemical, Tokyo Ohka Kogyo, Toray, Nissan Chemical Industries, Nitto Denko, Hitachi Chemical and Fuji Film. The ten competing firms decided to join hands as it is increasingly difficult for one company to cough up a huge R&D expense.

R&D funding of CASMAT will come from 6 billion yen ($50 million @ yen 120/$US 1) from the ten participating companies and another 6 billion yen ($50 million) from a project sponsored by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The consortium will develop low-k material for 65nm process rule semiconductors and resist for wiring pattern generation.

The R&D base of CASMAT will reside in Hitachi’s Central Research Center. Hitachi will receive 1 billion yen ($8.33 million) from CASMAT for leasing its clean room facility to the consortium. The thirty-engineer team will consist of 10 assignees, one from each participating company and 20 university researchers and engineers publicly solicited from semiconductor companies. [M. Robertson, Portelligent]