Pentax 2015 Annual Report Download - page 9

Initiatives in Fiscal 2016
Our understanding is that, as the market for notebook PCs shrinks,
applications for glass substrates used in HDDs will expand beyond
external HDDs and servers to other areas, and this will be a
positive development for HOYA. Previously, this business
depended strongly on notebook computers for its profits, but, now
the ratio of sales for use in notebook PCs has fallen below 50%.
Looking ahead, we think that demand will continue to rise as sales
for use in external HDDs and servers continue to rise, and the
number of disks per HDD unit increases. From a technology
perspective, next-generation HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic
recording) technology is expected to bring a dramatic increase in
HDD storage memory capacity. We view this as a good
opportunity for HOYA to demonstrate its superiority in the glass
substrate business, and we intend to give our full support to
customers to meet their needs from both a technical and a supply
perspective as well as contribute to the realization of new
technologies.
In the imaging-related product business, three product areas,
namely, optical materials, optical lenses, and lens units, account
for about 80% of sales. By application, about 70% of these
products go into conventional digital cameras. We are continuing
to develop demand in new applications outside the field of digital
cameras, including surveillance cameras, compact “action
cameras,” and automobile-mounted cameras, and we are aiming
to raise the ratio of new applications to 50% or more. Thus far, we
have supplied optical lenses, optical materials, and other related
products as discrete units suited to the designs of our digital
camera manufacturer customers. Specifically, we have operated
our business on a product-by-product basis, supplying optical
materials to lens polishing companies, optical lenses to lens unit
manufacturers, and lens units to camera manufacturers. However,
going forward, we foresee that, among our customer groups, there
will be some customers who do not have the sophisticated optical
design technology that traditional camera manufacturers have.
Therefore, we will draw on our technology and manufacturing
know-how to process optical materials into lenses and going
further downstream to design and manufacture lens unit products.
By actively making proposals for such products, we will endeavor
to develop new markets. As one example of these activities, the
year before last, we developed the lens unit for smartphones that
incorporates the thinnest threefold zoom lenses module in the industry using our glass mold lens, which is one of
HOYA’s strengths. At present, we are in receipt of positive responses from several smartphone manufacturers. In
those business domains where it is necessary to actively develop different customer groups in the new areas, we
are working to strengthen our marketing functions and are focusing more sharply on structuring systems for
formulating proposals that meet customer needs.
In the mask blanks for semiconductors business, we are expecting continued strong interest in the semiconductor
industry in cutting-edge fields next year and in subsequent years. We are working to gain an accurate grasp of
customer needs and respond to their technical requirements no matter what direction their advanced development
activities may take. This includes movements toward use of next-generation extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL).
Our aim will be to take the leadership in the creation of the cutting-edge blank market.
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