Toshiba 2014 Annual Report Download - page 45

ODD Business
On March 26, 2014, the company signed an agreement on
the transfer of the Optical Disk Drive business with Samsung
Electronics Co., Ltd. and OPTIS Co., Ltd. As a result of this
agreement, the business has been discontinued.
In March 2014, Toshiba brought a civil suit against SK
Hynix Inc. at the Tokyo District Court, under Japan’s Unfair
Competition Prevention Act. The suit seeks damages for the
wrongful acquisition and use of Toshiba’s proprietary
technical information related to NAND flash memory.
Moving forward, Toshiba will construct a more robust
system for protecting its intellectual property and
preventing its loss, and respond resolutely to unfair
competition, in order to maintain the advanced technical
competence, including those for semiconductors, that is the
source of its global competitive strength.
Storage business
Sales grew in FY2013, particularly of 3.5” HDD. In the
previous year, the business performed notably well, as the
 ooding in Thailand resulted in supply shortages that led to
persistently high prices. Operating income was lower year
on year, but remained stable. In the future, particularly in
light of the growth in demand for storage in the enterprise
market, we will shift momentum of our business from the
traditional mainstay of consumer products to enterprise
products, and work to steadily increase our share of products
such as near-line HDD and enterprise SSD. Furthermore, in
addition to cooperating with the memory business, we will
cooperate with the Cloud & Solutions Company to develop
new products and expand into new areas.
With the goal of strengthening the SSD business, in
January 2014 we acquired assets in the U.S. firm OCZ
Technology, Inc. (OCZ). With this acquisition we plan to
further increase the competitiveness of the SSD business by
combining our strong NAND Flash Memory technology with
SSD for PCs and data centers, areas where OCZ enjoys a
good track record.
In new products, at the end of February we started to
ship large capacity 5 terabyte HDD for near-line applications
in large servers and data centers, drives that realize the
industry’s largest storage capacity for a non-helium-gas-
filled HDD. Going forward we will continue to strengthen
our enterprise HDD products.
In mobile devices like smart phones, there is increasing
demand
f
rom users
f
or the capability to quickly and
easily exchange images and other data. Our mixed
signal IC and memor
y
businesses are collaborating in
d
eve
l
oping suc
h
pro
d
ucts. Ta
k
ing
d
ata store
d
on a
memor
y
card as the start point, pictures shot with a
digital camera
f
or example, we have launched
F
la
s
h
Air
TM
, an SDHC card
f
itted with wireless
communication
f
unctionalit
y
that makes possible on-
t
h
e-spot s
h
aring wit
h
smart p
h
ones an
d
ta
bl
ets. Ot
h
er
new pro
d
ucts in t
h
e same vein are our USB an
d
M
icroUSB adapter modules compatible with
T
rans
f
erJet
TM
,
which can transmit large quantities o
f
d
ata at
h
ig
h
spee
d
s, suc
h
as movies or mu
l
tip
l
e
photos, across
s
h
ort
d
istances,
simp
l
y w
h
en users
touch their devices
displa
y
s against
each other
.
Sales of wireless communication products
for mobile devices
5TB 3.5” Nearline HDD
In new products, in May 2013 we commenced mass
production of 64 gigabit (8 gigabyte) NAND Flash Memory
using second-generation 19nm process at Yokkaichi
Operations (located in Yokkaichi City, Mie Prefecture).
In August 2013, we commenced construction of the
second phase of Fab 5 at the same facility, with the objective
of securing production space for coming generations of 3D
products and for NAND Flash Memory products fabricated
with 15nm process technology. Construction was completed
in summer 2014.
TransferJetTM adapter module and FlashAirTM
(32GB Class10 compatible)
*1: Solid State Drive
*2: Nanometer (1 billionth of a meter)
Electronic Devices & Components Segment
43
TOSHIBA Annual Report 2014