Sharp Corp. has demonstrated a MEMS display jointly developed with Qualcomm subsidiary Pixtronix Inc. and announced it will be commercialized in 2017. The Japanese company will deploy this new display—dubbed the MEMS-IGZO display because it is a fusion of MEMS and IGZO technologies—in a bid to expand the use of displays to applications beyond the reach of LCDs.

NGK Insulator Ltd. has developed a solid-state ceramic lithium-ion battery whose density is roughly 10 times that of conventional solid-state batteries, and moreover, it is capable of working at high temperature of about 120 degrees centigrade, enabling it to be closely apposed with chips on a circuit board.

United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) and Fujitsu Semiconductor Ltd. announced at the end of last month an agreement whereby the Taiwanese foundry will become a minority shareholder in the Japanese firm, in what appears to be the last in a series of moves to reorganize the major fabs of Japanese chipmakers. Highlights of the recent round of restructuring have included Sony's acquisition of Renesas' 300mm fab, Panasonic's sale of its principal fabs to TowerJazz, and the establishment of an SoC design JV by Fujitsu and Panasonic.

Renesas Electronics Corp. has announced the R-Car V2H system-on-chip LSI, its first product dedicated for advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) applications. Sampling begins this month.

A team at the Institute for Chemical Research of Kyoto University has clarified the behavior of electrons and holes in organometal halide perovskite semiconductor (CH3NH3PbI3), which is a focus of growing interest as one of the most promising next-generation solar cells.

Renesas Electronics Corp., now in the midst of restructuring, has reported first-quarter business results superior to the forecast it announced in May. Renesas CEO Hisao Sakuta, who has been in charge since June 2013, talked frankly about the next steps in the restructuring. He observed that although it is clear what has to be done, restructuring has only reached the halfway point.

Tokyo Electron Ltd., having reported 46% year-on-year sales growth for the first quarter and a more than sixfold increase in operating profit, has revised its forecast for the first half of this fiscal year, raising the figure for sales 12 billion yen (US$120 million*) to 290 billion yen and that for operating profit 6.5 billion yen to 24.5 billion yen.

Waseda University and Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. have developed a handy Compton camera whose high sensitivity enables it to locate gamma radiation within a few seconds.

Displays have always been squeezed into a rectangular straitjacket. Even if a display has rounded corners or is curved, the basic form is rectangular. Now, here comes Sharp Corp. with its revolutionary Free-Form Display to set displays free. The FFD allows great freedom in the design of display shape. Sharp developed the panel by implementing gate drivers within pixel areas, not at the edges as in conventional panels. Sharp calls it in-pixel gate driver monolithic (IPGDM) technology.

Gigaphoton Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Komatsu Ltd., has developed a prototype laser-produced plasma (LPP) light source unit that achieved 92W extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source output at 4.2% conversion efficiency—more than doubling the company's previous result of 43W.

The book-to-bill ratio of Japan-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment was 0.82 in May, staying below 1 for the third successive month, according to the book-to-bill ratio report issued by the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ).

Nikon Corp. announced a three-year business plan calling for sales to increase 22% to 1,200 billion yen (US$12 billion*) and operating profit 75% to 110 billion yen within the term of the plan. For a new medical business unit, the sales target is 130 billion yen in fiscal 2016, starting from zero, with M&A set to play a major role.

In contrast to the slowing pace of PV system installation in Europe, PV module shipments in the Japanese market doubled last year to 8.6GW, giving Japan a growth rate second only to China's. In this expanding market, overseas suppliers' raised their share to almost 30%, according to the Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association (JPEA).

Renesas Electronics Corp. has agreed to sell subsidiary Renesas SP Drivers Inc. to Santa Clara, California-based, Synaptics Inc., an interface solutions vendor. Synaptics expects the acquisition of the LCD driver company, whose annual sales figure is equivalent to more than 75% of its own, will enable it to address a market worth 50% more than the one it currently serves.

Toshiba Corp. announced a 3-year business plan for fiscal 2014 to fiscal 2016 calling for growth of 1 trillion yen or 15% in sales in fiscal 2016 compared with fiscal 2013, and which targets sales of 7.5 trillion yen (US$75 billion*) in the plan's final year, ending March 2017, with operating profit of 450 billion yen and net profit of 200 billion yen.

Kazuo Ushida, senior executive vice president and president of Nikon Precision Equipment Company, will take office as president of Nikon Corp. following approval at a general meeting of shareholders on June 27.

"As a national strategy, Japan will begin 4K TV broadcasting in 2014 and lead the world by introducing 8K TV broadcasting in 2016," said Toshiyuki Minami, deputy director-general of the Information and Communications Bureau at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), in a keynote speech at FineTech Japan 2014 last month in Tokyo.

Renesas Electronics Corp., currently in the midst of restructuring underpinned by a 150 billion yen (US$1.5 billion*) capital injection from the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), has reported its business results for fiscal 2013 ended in March—the eye-catcher is the first full-year operating profit since fiscal 2010, the year it was established, and reported marginal operating profit.

Thanks to adoption by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) for its smart meter system, Wi-SUN is gaining momentum and seems destined to be the major communications format in Japan for M2M communications.

April 1 looms large in the Japanese calendar. For government and most companies it signaled the start of fiscal 2014. This year the date had added significance because consumption tax jumped from 5% to 8% on that day. There are fears that the tax hike will be like a bucket of cold water chucked over the Japanese economy, which after marking time for more than 20 years, is at last showing signs of renewed vitality.

Panasonic Corp. announced a new sales target of 10 trillion yen (US$100 million*) for fiscal 2019**, its centennial year, and what's more, aims to hit that number mainly on the strength of businesses other than consumer electronics, signaling dramatic change for an enterprise that has traditionally been synonymous with consumer electronics.

Nikon Corp., which has promised to ship a 450mm tool in 2015, intends to boost ArF immersion lithography technology with its newly announced NSR-S630D for 300mm lines and is positioning the upcoming 450mm tool as an extension of ArF technology.

Following the arrest of a former SanDisk engineer who is alleged to have stolen technical data from Toshiba's Yokkaichi NAND operations and provided it to SK Hynix Inc. when he took up a job with the Korean company, Toshiba Corp. and SanDisk Corp. respectively filed lawsuits against Hynix seeking redress.

Japan's PV market has been transformed in composition and scale since the feed-in tariff scheme was introduced in July 2012. No longer a market dominated by Japanese manufacturers and skewed toward residential installations, overseas suppliers account for an increasing share of a growing market in which non-residential PV installations are the fastest-growing segment.

Thine Electronics, Inc. announced that it has licensed its V-by-One HS display interface technology to Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Inc. Buoyed by the announcement on Monday, the share price of Thine Electronics, Japan's leading fabless company, has soared more than 15% since last week on the JASDAQ stock market.

Positioning healthcare as its third mainstay business alongside Storage and Energy, Toshiba Corp. set an ambitious target in its 3-year business plan announced last August: drive growth of the healthcare business to 600 billion yen (US$6 billion*) in sales in fiscal 2015, a roughly 50% increase from fiscal 2013, and then keep on climbing to 1 trillion yen (US$10 billion*) in fiscal 2017. Toshiba went public on Thursday with its strategy for hitting these big numbers, showcased the technologies it hopes will underpin expansion, and made it clear that, in addition to organic growth, it will pursue growth through aggressive M&A.

Renesas Electronics Corp. announced it has developed a 28nm embedded flash memory intellectual property based on its proprietary MONOS flash structure and that the IP satisfies requirements such as data retention time, cycle time and speed for embedded flash memory of microcontrollers for automotive applications.

Renesas Electronics Corp. announced its business results for the third quarter of fiscal 2013 together with the forecast for the full year ending March 2014. The company not only recorded an operating profit of 30 billion yen (US$300 million*) for the quarter—making it the fourth consecutive quarter in the black—but forecast an operating profit of 54.7 billion yen for the full year, which would be Renesas' first fiscal year in the black since its foundation in 2010.

The skyrocketing amounts of data involved in semiconductor manufacturing processes make analysis methodologies similar to those required for big data analysis essential. This was the context for discussion at AEC/APC Symposium Asia 2013, held in Tokyo last November, on measures to cope with the rising tide of data associated with semiconductor manufacturing processes.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) held a public hearing last Thursday to allocate bandwidth for the coming LTE-Advanced services. Invited to the hearing were Docomo, KDDI, Softbank and eAccess-the four mobile carriers that had applied for bandwidth for 4G mobile services. These companies intend to begin 4G services in 2015 or 2016.

Renesas Electronics Corp. has launched a product longevity program that clearly indicates the period during which Renesas assures supply for each product. The program targets coverage of over 5,000 current and yet-to-be-released products comprising MCUs and analog and power devices, and eventually system-on-chip LSIs will be included too.

2014 is shaping up to be a good year for Japan's electronics industry. On the plus side, the industry should benefit from an economic recovery engineered by the Abe administration as well as a weaker yen, many companies should be in better shape having restructured their operations, and Tokyo's selection as host for the 2020 Olympics is an additional tonic. On the other hand, naysayers worry about the impact of the consumption-tax hike due in April.