What's New - June 2003

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Eastmon Kodak Co. OLED products
Kodak brands OLED displays as NuVue Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, N.Y., USA, branded its organic light-emitting diode (OLED) products, which will be known as Kodak NuVue displays. The new brand will be used for both the company's active- and passive-matrix OLED products. The introduction of the branded product line is the latest development in Kodak's commitment to further enhance and commercialize OLED display technology. Most recently, the company unveiled the Kodak EasyShare LS633 zoom digital camera, the first product with a full-color, active-matrix (AM) OLED display. The LS633 camera features Kodak's AM OLED technology to display bright, sharp images for better on-camera viewing and sharing from virtually any angle. Research firms such as DisplaySearch and Stanford Resources predict the OLED display market could reach up to $3 billion by 2007. Consumer electronics devices expected to incorporate OLED technology in the next five years include mobile phones, digital cameras, PDAs and DVD players.

Digital cameras become winners for Japanese manufacturers
According to Nikkei Business Publications Asia Ltd., due to the expansion of the global digital camera market, all Japanese companies producing the gadget have become winners in that field. Brisk digital camera sales helped Olympus Optical Co. Ltd. and Canon Inc. post record-high profits for the fiscal year ended March 31. "Digital cameras are sold as soon as we produce them. Manufactures are battling to procure parts," notes Tasuku Imai, vice president of Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. "Our target for fiscal 2003 is to grab a 20 percent share of the global market. Some say that it's an ambitious goal, but we are confident that we will achieve it," says Olympus President Tsuyoshi Kikukawa. Digital camera manufacturers were burdened with heavy costs associated with initial investment for a long time. But the product, which some had predicted would not yield profits, became a cash cow as production increased significantly, the report said. Global digital camera shipments soared 70 percent on the year to 24.55 million units in 2002, surging 50 percent in value terms to about ¥800 billion (about US$6.9 billion).

Olympus, Sony Corp., Canon and Fujifilm are fiercely competing to win the lion's share of the global digital camera market, with each company holding a share of around 20 percent, the report said. Olympus saw its digital camera division swing back to profitability on an operating basis in fiscal 2002. At the top five manufacturers, including Nikon Corp, operating profits in their digital-camera-related divisions rose 130 percent in fiscal 2002.

Second-tier manufacturers also enjoyed strong sales, with their strategies of focusing on small or thin digital cameras proving successful, the report said. Konica Corp. and Minolta Co. Ltd., which plan to merge their operations in August, both reported record-high group pretax profits for fiscal 2002. Minolta saw ultrathin digital cameras sell briskly, and Konica enjoyed robust sales of small models with resolutions of 5 million pixels. Casio Computer Co. Ltd. and Pentax Corp. also saw digital camera sales help shore up their earnings.

Intel sees 1.5 billion PCs with fast Internet by 2010S
More than 1.5 billion computers, or three-fifths of all computers sold, will have high-speed Internet connections by the end of this decade, Intel President Paul Otellini predicted. By 2010, handheld devices that combine computer, phone and video features will run faster than the fastest Pentium chip Intel now produces, and run some one billion transistors spinning at over four billion cycles a second, Reuters reported. Otellini made the boasts during an annual strategy briefing for Wall Street analysts. Officials of the world's biggest computer chip maker sought to battle back critics who say the best days of the computer industry are over, and that semiconductors such as Intel makes are becoming commoditized. Roughly two-thirds of U.S. workplace computers have high-speed connections, but less than one-third of residential users have connections faster than basic 56,000 bit-per-second dial-up phone connections over standard phone lines, according to data from Web Site Optimization LLC in Ann Arbor, Mich., USA. In 2002, the PC industry sold its billionth PC, according to market research firm Gartner Inc. The computer industry is struggling to create demand for new types of computers that boast in-built wireless connections and massive data-processing capabilities to overcome three years of flat to negative growth, said the report. Analysts predict tepid industry growth of between 4 percent to 6 percent in 2003.