Sharp Corp. that had secured a combined 360 billion yen (US$3.673 billion) in loans from its two main banks in September last year on a condition that it would turn an operating profit in the second half, likely generated slightly more than 20 billion yen (US$204 million) in group operating profit in the FY12 2nd half (October-March 2013), surpassing the standing projection of … [Read more...]

Sony Corp. seemed to have managed to slash its operating loss in the TV business by half in the fiscal year that just ended by reducing fixed costs and narrowing its product line-up, a significant improvement even though the segment has lost money for the 9th year in a row. The company ’s TV business posted an operating loss of 148 billion yen (US$1.51 billion) in the fiscal … [Read more...]

Nikon Corp. has received an order from Intel Corp. for a next-generation stepper capable of creating circuit patterns on 450mm silicon wafers. It is to supply a prototype to Intel in 2015 for roughly 6 billion yen (US$63.16 M). This price tag is about 30% higher than that for current steppers, which are designed to handle silicon wafers 300mm in diameter. But increasing the … [Read more...]

Fujifilm has released a high-end tough outdoor model- the FinePix XP200. The model is priced at about 30,000 yen (US$310). The company expects to sell around 300,000 units per year. The main features of the XP200 are a 1/2.3-inch 16-megapixel CMOS sensor, 5x zoom lens (28-140mm in the 35mm format), waterproof down to 15 meters, shock-proof from 2m above; full HD movie of … [Read more...]