With the course of the COVID-19 pandemic constantly changing, China is sticking with its "Dynamic Zero-COVID Policy" and has been slow to lift the lockdown on its cities that have been recently affected by the outbreaks of the disease. Hence, the manufacturing industries of the major Chinese cities are facing delays in the resumption of normal operation, and a production gap has emerged in 2Q22. For the electronics ODMs, this production gap will be difficult to bridge in 2H22. Additionally, the ongoing global inflation is keeping prices of goods at a very high level, and this trend will dampen the peak-season demand surge during the second half of the year. The effect of the inflationary pressure has been especially noticeable in the demand for consumer electronics such as smartphones, notebook computers, and tablet computers. This, in turn, is also impacting the MLCC market in terms of demand and inventory. Currently, the general inventory level has risen above 90 days for MLCCs of all sizes. Therefore, TrendForce forecasts that prices of consumer-spec MLCCs will fall further by 3-6% on average in 2H22.

On the other hand, demand remains fairly strong in application segments such as high-performance computing solutions (which include servers), networking equipment, industrial automation solutions, and energy storage systems. Furthermore, IDMs in the semiconductor industry will be adjusting the allocation of production capacity as the market for consumer electronics continues to experience a slowdown in 2H22. As a result, the undersupply situation for certain ICs will ease. Moreover, demand will be propped up in the high-end segment of the MLCC market and other application segments (e.g., automotive electronics and industrial equipment). All in all, thanks to the demand related to automotive electronics, servers, networking equipment, etc., TrendForce forecasts that the annual total MLCC shipments will increase by 2% YoY to around 2.58 trillion pieces for 2022.

TDK Corporation announces the sequential launch of the embedded SD ESRD4 series, the embedded SSD ESS1B series and the M.2 SSD Type 2280-D5-B-M SNS1B series. With the progress of IoT, the demand for micro storage for edge data is rapidly expanding. In particular, eMMC, which can be mounted on a surface, was expected to be potent, but the trend is shifting from eMMC to UFS, which is associated with the larger capacity of smartphones.

On the other hand, a reliable and appropriate storage capacity is required for I-IoT that usually uses a small capacity. TDK's embedded SD ESRD4 series is a SD card, equipped with a highly durable SLC/pSLC NAND flash that can be implemented on boards. It covers a wide range of capacities from 1GB to 32GB, suitable for storing a lightweight system such as Linux and RTOS.

TDK Corporation announces the new SDS1B series of 6 Gbps serial ATA compatible 2.5 inch solid state drives for industrial applications, featuring the NAND flash memory controller chip GBDriver GS1. The new products will be available from August 2015.

Recently, the need for fast, high-volume data storage is on the rise, driven by developments such as larger operating system overheads and the trend towards high-definition large-capacity data applications as exemplified by 4K and 8K full high-resolution data broadcasting. As data volumes increase, industrial applications also increasingly call for solid state drives with MLC NAND type memory. In such cases, improved data retention capability as well as high reliability become important considerations along with the regular benchmark test results.

TDK Life on Record, a leading global brand dedicated to delivering high-quality headphones and audio products, announced U.S. availability today of its new TDK Life on Record TREK Max wireless speaker, the newest addition to the TDK Life on Record TREK family of weatherproof audio offerings.

The durable TREK Max speaker features a rugged, weatherized design that protects it from the elements, giving users the confidence to take their favorite music to any environment - at the beach, on the playing field or in the backyard.

TDK Corporation announced today the successful development of the SNG4A series of serial ATA II compatible industrial solid state drives. The new NAND flash memory modules enable storage capacities of up to 64 GB with SLC type NAND flash memory. Measuring only approx. 22 x 42 mm, the modules support use in M.2 slots and will be available from August 2014.

The new M.2 form factor is currently garnering a lot of attention and is expected to become the dominant standard for consumer applications. Furthermore, the adoption of M.2 for industrial applications will most likely also be promoted heavily. Motherboards for industrial use not only have to achieve good transfer speeds, but there is also a growing tendency to place more emphasis on reliability, since products often have to be operable for periods of ten years or more.

TDK Corporation has announced that its Thailand-based HDD suspension assemblies subsidiary Magnecomp Precision Technology Public Company Limited ("MPT") concluded an agreement in October to acquire two HDD-related companies (EntroComponent Solutions, LLC and EntroComponent Solutions Singapore Pte Ltd) from U.S.-based specialty polymer and resin manufacturer entrotech Inc. MPT also inked a business alliance agreement with entrotech.

entrotech mainly manufactures and sells specialty polymers and resins. Products employing these materials span a wide range of fields, including automotive films, HDD-related components, aircraft paint, and medical products. The HDD-related product manufacturing and sales companies subject to this acquisition handle vibration dampening materials attached to HDD head suspensions, as well as filters, sealants and other products for HDDs. MPT specializes in the manufacture and sales of suspension assemblies for HDD heads, supplying products globally from its base in Thailand.

TDK Corporation announced today the launch in November 2013 of the SHG4A series of half slim type solid state drive (SSD) modules for industrial applications. The new NAND flash memory modules support the serial ATA II standard and enable storage capacities of up to 128 GB also with SLC type NAND flash memory. Measuring only approx. 54 x 40 mm, the modules are about one half the size of a 1.8-inch hard disk drive (HDD).

The SHG4A series of half slim type industrial SSDs employs the standard SATA connector also used for 2.5 inch type SSDs, which eliminates the need for a special connector at the customer's host side. The GBDriver power interruption tolerance algorithm which has won high acclaim especially among industrial users, and an integrated power supply protection circuit are standard features, making this compact SATA flash drive resistant against power supply problems, a highly desirable characteristic for demanding industrial applications.

Storage legend TDK launched the SDG4A line of entry-level consumer SSDs in the 2.5-inch SATA form-factor. Available in 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB capacities, the drives use TDK's in-house GBDriver RS4 processor, and MLC NAND flash. Featuring SATA 3 Gb/s interface, the drives offer transfer speeds as high as 180 MB/s reads, with 130 MB/s writes. Common SSD features such as TRIM, ECC, and read-retry. Production of the drives will begin later this month.

TDK Life on Record, a leading global brand with a rich audio legacy, today announced the retail availability for three new wireless speakers in the United States. Highly anticipated since debuting in September 2012 at the prestigious IFA trade show in Berlin, the new products successfully marry high fidelity audio and connectivity with sleek and modern design.

The new Wireless Boombox, Wireless Sound Cube and Wireless Weatherproof Speaker now integrate Bluetooth technology to deliver a truly wireless audio experience. Acclaimed by industry experts, the new products recently won a 2012 silver "IDEA" design excellence award from the Industrial Designers Society of America.

TDK Corporation has developed the GBDriver RS4 series of NAND type flash memory controllers with support for 3 Gbps serial ATA. Sales will begin in January 2013.

With an effective access speed of 180 MB/sec, the GBDriver RS4 is an advanced high-speed SATA controller chip. It is fully compatible not only with the latest 1xnm generation and 2x nm generation 16 kB/page SLC (single level cell) and MLC (multi level cell) NAND type flash memory, but also with 8 kB/page and 4 kB/page structures. This allows the customer to select the optimal flash memory for the respective application, providing the flexibility to configure high-speed SATA storage with a capacity ranging from 512 MB to 1 TB.

TDK Life on Record today announced the addition of four new wireless speaker products to round out its premium audio line. These new products mark the next evolution of the TDK Life on Record audio portfolio, creating an ecosystem of products that give consumers high-fidelity audio with universal input flexibility and portability in all areas of their lives. Building on the success of its initial audio line launch in 2010 and highlighted by its proprietary "Signature Sound" and sleek designs, the new TDK Life on Record products now integrate Bluetooth technology to deliver a truly wireless audio experience. Now, audiophiles are free to utilize their mobile devices in any way they choose and still easily play music -- no docking required -- all without sacrificing audio quality.

TDK Life on Record, today announced from IFA Berlin the launch of new in-ear and over-ear headphones building on its existing headphone portfolio. These new products combine high fidelity sound with clean, functional designs to enhance the listening experience.

The new ST750 Over-ear Headphones and IE800 In-ear Headphones add to TDK Life on Record's extensive "Signature Sound" headphone and audio line of products, which debuted last year. With the addition of these new products, TDK Life on Record now offers a full headphone portfolio that addresses all listening needs.

Storage mogul TDK launched its Series 7 mSATA SSD line (model: SMG3B). The drives incorporate TDK's in-house GBDriver RS3 processor, and 1 to 64 GB of SLC NAND flash memory, which makes these drives ideal for Rapid Storage Technology SSD caching. The processor provides cutting-edge 44-bit ECC to weed out caching errors. Another application would be taking advantage of the drive's durable NAND flash memory, and deploying it in sensitive computing devices such as ATM computers, kiosks, payment terminals, ticketing machines, medical equipment, marine navigation equipment, avionics, etc. The drives only take advantage of SATA 3 Gb/s, providing sequential speeds of up to 170 MB/s reads and 70 MB/s writes. Modern SSD features including 128-bit AES data encryption, are provided. Prices vary by the numerous capacity options available.

Data storage expert TDK corporation unveiled the eSSD, a single-package embedded SSD chip. The chip combines a SATA 3 Gb/s SSD controller, and NAND flash in capacities ranging between 1 GB to 4 GB. The SSD controller logic is based on TDK's new GBDriver R3 controller design, and the NAND flash is of single-layer cell (SLC) type. The eSSD provides sequential transfer rates of 55 MB/s read, and 30 MB/s write, it packs an automatic garbage disposal and wear-leveling logic, along with native 128-bit AES data encryption. The package measures 17 x 17 mm, with a ball-count of 208. The chip can be part of anything, from large logic boards of embedded computing appliances, to tiny half-height mSATA SSDs. TDK is giving the chip in its mSATA board forms as evaluation samples.

I-O Data introduced the CFU-IV line of CompactFlash cards for IPCs. These cards are built with a guaranteed operational temperature range as wide as -40°C to 85°C. The model launched today provides 256 MB of storage, and is driven by TDK GBDriver controller that minimizes write errors. The card conforms to CF Type I specifications. Backed by a 1 year warranty, the CFU-IV256 will be priced around US $110. It is also available in 128 MB, 1 GB, and 2 GB variants.

Here's a development that will bring joy to those that prefer to hear mechanical noises from their hard discs instead of the inky silence of the new solid state drives. The current perpendicular magnetic recording technology used in today's hard discs are due to hit a brick wall within a couple of generations or so. This will finally give SSDs the chance to make mechanical drives obsolete once and for all when their capacities increase and the prices drop. To get around this, TDK intend to use lasers coupled with a high coercivity material to achieve this capacity improvement. The coercivity value of a material is a measure of how difficult it is to magnetize ie how strong the magnetizing field needs to be. A material with low coercivity, is easy to magnetize, but it can also lose its magnetic imprint (north and south domains) easily, especially with densely packed data and is easy to erase with stray magnetic fields and to some extent, physical shock. Conversely a material with a high coercivity value can be damned hard to magnetize, but will keep its magnetic imprint much more stably and crucially for data storage, can retain much smaller magnetic domains, giving rise to greatly increased storage capacity for all that ever increasing avalanche of crucial data, such as music files, dodgy videos and humungous video game installs.

Data storage veteran TDK announced the GBDriver RS3 series solid state drives (SSDs) for use in embedded devices, tablets, and thin-clients. It includes low-capacity single-level cell (SLC) SSDs, available in 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB sizes; and mainstream capacitity multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash SSDs in sizes of 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB. The SLC models provide transfer rates of 160 MB/s read and 60 MB/s write; while the MLCs ones read/write at 160/25 MB/s. All drives use SATA 3 Gb/s interface. The GBDriver RS3 series features an in-house SSD controller made by TDK, that provides automatic 128-bit AES data encryption, Static Wear Leveling functions, and SMART. The drives offer 500,000 hours of MTBF, and make use of aluminum casings. TDK is expected to ship the drives in late September.

Late last week, TDK demonstrated its technological prowess by displaying the prototype of a new optical disc that can hold 1 TB of data. The unnamed disc type holds data on both its sides, each with 16 recording layers, each layer holding 32 GB of data. Physically, the disc has the same diameter as today's CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs at 12 cm, but is said to have double the thickness of a Blu-ray disc. It uses the same materials used in making Blu-ray discs, and also uses the same numerical aperture value of 0.85, which indicates that a player of this new medium should be able to read Blu-ray discs, too.

Many of Blu-ray's technologies (such as its video format) can also be ported to this new medium. As for propagation of the standard, TDK says that its creation is intended to be a highly proliferated standard, accessible to all classes of users from home entertainment to enterprise archival. The company, however, believes that manufacturers (of media, disc drives, and players) will have to play a bigger role in its commercialization. "Its commercialization depends on disc manufacturers," TDK said. Earlier this year, the Blu-ray disc association approved standardization of BDXL, an evolved Blu-ray disc that can hold 128 GB of data, an eighth of what this new disc can hold.

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) today announced the finalization and release of the "Blu-ray 3D" specification. The specification, which represents the work of the leading Hollywood studios and consumer electronic and computer manufacturers, will enable the home entertainment industry to bring the 3D experience into consumers' living rooms on Blu-ray Disc, the most capable high definition home entertainment platform.

"Throughout this year, movie goers have shown an overwhelming preference for 3D when presented with the option to see a theatrical release in either 3D or 2D," said Victor Matsuda, chairman, BDA Global Promotions Committee. "We believe this demand for 3D content will carry over into the home now that we have, in Blu-ray Disc, a medium that can deliver a quality Full HD 3D experience to the living room."

The "Blu-ray 3D" specification fully leverages the technical advantages of the Blu-ray Disc format to deliver unmatched picture quality as well as uniformity and compatibility across the full range of Blu-ray 3D products, both hardware and software. Notably, the specification allows every Blu-ray 3D player and movie to deliver Full HD 1080p resolution to each eye, thereby maintaining the industry leading image quality to which Blu-ray Disc viewers are accustomed. Moreover, the specification is display agnostic, meaning that Blu-ray 3D products will deliver the 3D image to any compatible 3D display, regardless of whether that display uses LCD, Plasma or other technology and regardless of what 3D technology the display uses to deliver the image to the viewer's eyes.

TDK Japan, a supplier of read-write heads for hard-drive manufacturers predicts that 2.5 hard drives will be a reality by late 2009, and will reach markets by early 2010. The company presented a roadmap to the press late last week, that shows that it will have the technology available to produce 3.5 inch disk platters with 640 GB data density. Four such platters will go into making 2.5 TB drives. On the 2.5 inch drive front, the roadmap shows a jump to 320 GB per platter density, which allows 640GB 2-platter SFF drives to be announced by manufacturers towards the end of this year.

Hard Drive manufacturers had reached the 2 TB milestone earlier this year. Seagate and Western Digital used four 500 GB platters in their products. At this rate of data density increases, a 5 TB hard drive in 2010, as predicted by Hitachi's Yoshihiro Shiroishi last year, sounds a little more realistic.

TDK Corporation announced today the launch in late May 2009 of the SDG2A series of serial ATA(SATA) II compatible industrial solid state drives(SSDs) with a maximum memory capacity of 64 GByte.
These products are industrial SATA Flash discs equipped with GBDriver RS2 SATA controller ICs developed by TDK. They support high-speed access with an effective read speed of 95 MByte/second and effective write speed of 55 MByte/second. They also feature powerful error correction capabilities scalable to 15-bit/sector ECC(error correction code), providing high levels of data reliability. The use of an internal power supply protection function prevents errors in the event of a power interruption. These SATA drives are also equipped with an auto-recovery function that automatically recovers data when read disturbance errors occur from repeated reading of data, making them ideal for use on automotive application such as car navigation systems.

Fujitsu Limited today announced that it has come to an agreement with TDK Corporation ("TDK") to terminate their strategic business alliance in regard to hard disk drive ("HDD") heads, and in conjunction, the companies will dissolve their joint-venture agreement regarding HDD head manufacturer TDK FUJITSU Philippines Corporation ("TFPC"; 66% owned by TDK and 34% owned by Fujitsu).