Bloomberg BusinessWeek, May 1, 2017 (II)

choi

(2) Pavel Alpegev and Takako Taniguchi with Jason Clenfield, Why Japan's Idemitsu Isn't Feeling Blue;
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/a ... t-on-japan-supplier

Quote (print):

"Idemitsu Kosan Co, Japan's second-largest refiner, began experimenting with OLEDs in the mid-1980s to reduce its reliance on petroleum after the global oil shock. The company's research led to the development of blue diodes, which are critical for offering a full range of colors on displays. Fast-forward three decades, and the blue pixels on the OLED screens of Google Inc's latest Pixel smartphone or any Galaxy model from Samsung Electronics Co are probably built with Idemitsu's materials or patents. The likely use of these next-generation screens on some iPhones by yearend will only bolster the company's reputation.

"Wider adoption of the advanced displays, which offer crisper images and use less battery power, is turning the spotlight on Japanese component suppliers that until now had virtually no stake in iPhone sales. Canon Tokki Corp, for example, has a near-monopoly on the giant vacuum machines capable of making OLED screens. Dai Nippon Printing Co 大日本印刷 株式会社 [1876- ; Takyo-based] and Toppan Printing Co are leading manufacturers of fine metal meshes.
needed to imprint OLED pixels.

"IHS Markit Ltd forecasts OLED screens will overtake [TFT] LCD [thin-film transistor liquid-crystal display] displays for smartphone panels this year, with the market expected to reach $22.7 billion.

"OLED displays can be thinner and more energy-efficient. They can produce deeper black colors, because organic pixels can glow on their own, whereas LCDs require a backlight panel. OLEDs can also be made on flexible plastic for use in a wider variety of shapes and applications. The challenge
has been in creating these long-lasting, bright screens at low enough prices.

"That [Idemitsu's OLED] allowed Pioneer Corp [a Japanese company] to include the world’s first commercial OLED display for a car stereo in 1999. 'We were there from the beginning,' says Yūichiro KAWAMURA 川村 祐一郎, chief researcher at Idemitsu's electronic materials development center.

"More advances followed, but it took massive investments by South Korean screen manufacturers to produce screens that were price-competitive with LCDs. Samsung bet its smartphone future on OLEDs and currently makes more than 90 percent of all LED screens used in those mobile devices [that is Samsung dominates in small-sized OLED; yet Idemitsu has collaborated with Korea's LG to develop larger-size OLED for TVs].

" 'We have had all the key patents for 10 years,' says Takamitsu NAGASE 長瀬 隆光, general manager in charge of business strategy at Idemitsu's electronic materials department.

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Apple's embrace of its blue pixel technology could prove lucrative
(b) Idemitsu Kōsan  出光興産株式会社
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idemitsu_Kosan
(Sazō IDEMITSU 出光 佐三 founded Idemitsu & Co 出光商会 (pronounced Idemitsu Shōkai) in 1911, selling lubricant oil for Nippon Oil 日本石油 [a civilian company; not a state-owned enterprise]; Headquarters Tokyo)

In Japanese, 興産 is the same as 工業 (pronounced kōgyō).

choi

(c) Canon Tokki Co
(i) Historical Highlights. In About the Company. Canon Tokki Co, undated.
www.canon-tokki.co.jp/eng/company/history.html

Quote: 1967 "Tsugami Specialty Machine Co, Ltd was established by Kenichi TSUGAMI in Shimbashi, Minato-ku, Tokyo, with capitalization of ¥1 million, and began selling machine tools and automation systems.  [company's own translation: '『津上特機株式会社』を東京都港区新橋に資本金100万円で津上健一が創立。工作機械、自動化機械の販売を開始。'  The company was acquired by Canon in 2007.]
(ii) Japanese-English dictionary:
* tokki  特機 【とっき】 (n): "specialized equipment; specialized machinery"
* toppan 凸版 【とっぱん】 (n): "letterpress; relief printing"
   ^ 凸版印刷
   https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/凸版印刷
   (包括古代以整塊木板去雕刻的木刻版)
* zenmen ni dasu 前面に出す 【ぜんめんにだす】 (exp[ression], v): "to highlight something; to bring something to the forefront"
   ^ The noun 前面 in Japanese has the same meaning as in Chinese. "The "ni" is a preposition: to. So 前面に出す has the object (to be brought to front), followed by を (a preposition indicating the word in front of it is the object, pronounced 'o'), followed by the phrase (前面に出す, where "出す" is the transitive verb).

(d)
(i) Toppan's 110-Year Journey. In Corporate Information. Toppan Printing Co, Ltd, undated
www.toppan.co.jp/english/corporateinfo/history/1900.html
("In the 1880s, Edoardo Chiossone [1833 - 1898; Italian; spent 1875-1898 in Japan and died there], a foreign technical advisor at the Ministry of Finance's Printing Bureau 大蔵省印刷局 (now the National Printing Bureau 独立行政法人 国立印刷局), trained many new engineers and contributed greatly to advances in Japan's banknote printing technology, including fine-line engraver operation, the Erhört letterpress method, and watermark printing plate production. Two engineers, Enkichi KIMURA 木村 延吉 and Ginjiro FURUYA 降矢 銀次郎" founded Toppan Printing in 1900 in Tokyo)

The kanji, except 国立印刷局 is derived from the next source.
(ii) 凸版印刷株式会社
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E ... 8%E5%8D%B0%E5%88%B7
(section 1 企業概要: 大蔵省印刷局でエドアルド・キヨッソーネの部下だった木村延吉と 降矢銀次郎が出資者を募ったのが始まりで、社名の「凸版」は創業当時、最新鋭であった銅凸版印刷技術（別名・エルヘート式凸版印刷）を前面に出すためにつけられたものである

my translation for the last half: The company name at the time of founding was to highlight 銅凸版印刷技術 (also known as Erhört letterpress method)

Try as I may, I do not know what Erhört stands for. From the context, it appears to be a person's surname. But there is nothing in the English Web that has this word (except Toppan Printing Co's own Web pages). In German, the "erhört" (with "e" in lower case; meaning 'answered') is the past participle of the verb "erhören."

choi

(e) Markit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markit
(is [sic; should be 'was'] a global financial information and services company, that was founded in 2003 outside London as Mark-it Partners; in 2016 formed a merger of equals with IHS Inc to form IHS Markit)

(f) I spend time looking into OLED.
(i) It seems to me that Idemitsu's blue OLED is blue fluorescence OLED, because there is no blue phosphorescence blue OLED. See Performance chart of idel
http://www.idemitsu.com/products/electronic/el/performance.html
(ii) But what about active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED), that Samsung is said to excel at?
(iii) I know Apple is reluctant to buy from Samsung for just about anything. But why does Apple select Idemitsu over Samsung for blue OLED?

(g) Lastly, you may be aware of Apple tried in vain to, for iPhone screen, use (man-made) sapphire produced by GT Advanced Technologies, Inc (based in Merrimack, NH, a town situated between City of Manchester in the north and Nashua on the south). This is the latest development in that front.

Bob Sanders, Bankruptcy Trustee Files $1 Billion Suit Against Two Ex-GTAT Executives. New Hampshire Business Review, Apr 28, 2017
http://www.nhbr.com/April-28-201 ... ex-GTAT-executives/
("Only a tiny fraction of the material would meet Apple’s expectations, leading to GTAT’s $1.3 billion bankruptcy")

Popularly called bankruptcy trustee, "a trustee in bankruptcy is a person [civilian lawyer] who is appointed by the United States Trustee Program, a division of the United States Department of Justice," en.wikipedia.org, whose job is to maximize the amount of money unsecured creditors will get from a bankrupt.