Furukawa Electric to Commercialize Glass Plate in F2008

Furukawa Electric will commercialize glass plate in fiscal 2008 starting April by utilization of its glass fiber productive technology. The firm plans to supply glass plate applied to hard discs and cover glasses for liquid crystal displays. The firm hasn’t revealed when to start commercial production and how much to produce glass plate initially.Furukawa Electric has supplied aluminium blank plate for hard discs so far. The firm becomes able to present both aluminium and glass plate used as hard disc substrates. The firm produces aluminium blank plate at Nikko works in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. Glass plate is likely to be produced at other works near its users.Aluminium hard discs are used into stationary appliances including desktop personal computers, servers and hard-disc video recorders while glass hard discs are used into mobile appliances which are mobile personal computers and portable music players. However, small-sized glass hard discs, 1-inch and 0.85-inches diameter, are recently in severe competition with flash memories. Then Furukawa Electric seems to focus in 2.5-inch diameter glass plate which is applied to mobile personal computers.As to cover glasses for liquid crystal displays, Furukawa Electric targets the adoption into cellular phones. Plastic substrates are mainly used for liquid crystal displays of cell phones currently.