Taiyo Yuden Co., Ltd. (太陽誘電株式会社) is a Japanese materials and electronics company, situated in Kyobashi, Chuo, Tokyo, that helped pioneer recordable CD technology (CD-R) along with Sony and Philips in 1988. Founded 70 years ago, Taiyo Yuden currently operates factories in Japan, Singapore, Korea, China, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Malaysia. It was well known for its recordable optical media, which were regarded by many to be the very best in the industry. In June 2015, Taiyo Yuden announced its intention to discontinue its recording media business by December of that year, citing market shrinkage, changing market conditions, difficulty while improving earnings and a hike in the cost of raw materials. The company employs almost twenty thousand people worldwide and reports annual sales of more than $2 billion. The current CEO and President is Shoichi Tosaka. The company is a constituent of the Nikkei 225 stock market index.

History

Taiyo Yuden was established by Hikohachi Sato on March 23, 1950, in Suginami, Tokyo. In January 1973 Taiyo Yuden is listed in the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The world's first axial leaded ceramic capacitor is developed by company in July 1976. That's branded Audio tape, known as Triad in North America, was introduced to the market in 1982. Since 1985, Taiyo Yuden has annually published Needs & Seeds (Taiyo Yuden Technical Report, ISSN 0911-5439). In October 1988, the world's first CD-R was made by Taiyo Yuden and presented to the public under the brand name That's CD-R. However development had already begun as early as in summer 1985. The underlying organic cyanine dye technology was developed by a team of Taiyo Yuden engineers, Takashi Ishiguro and Emiko Hamada. In 1987, START Lab Inc. was founded as a joint venture between Sony Corporation and Taiyo Yuden Co., Ltd. for the CD-R recording media business in Japan. Taiyo Yuden introduced That's Double Density CD-R with 1.3 GB storage space in 2000. In April 2003, an anechoic chamber test facility was established. Effective March 1, 2006, the power supply factory in Mexico (formerly Taiyo Yuden de Mexico, originally Zentec Inc) was sold to Tamura Corporation. The acquisition of Shoei Electronics Co., Ltd., formerly a subsidiary of Shoei Co., Ltd., took place March 1, 2007. In October 2008, JVC and Taiyo Yuden set up a new joint venture, called Victor Advanced Media. In February of the same year the world's first recordable Blu-ray Disc using an organic dye recording layer is launched. On June 11, 2015, Taiyo Yuden announced that it will withdraw from the recording media business, including CDs, DVDs, BDs, at the end of 2015. The same day, START Lab Inc. announced that it will discontinue selling optical discs at the end of February 2016.

Products

Recording media

Taiyo Yuden branded products were not common outside Japan (where Taiyo Yuden media had a market share of about 60%) but unbranded CDs and DVDs were available from some online retailers. Rebranded Taiyo Yuden media could be found under Fujifilm, Fusion, Maxell, Miflop, Panasonic, Plextor, Sony, TDK, and Verbatim Corporation brands. In Japan, Korea and Greece, Taiyo Yuden was distributing its own brand "That's". Taiyo Yuden positioned its blank media as a premium product which offered reliability, compatibility and peace of mind; the "Made in Japan" branding for That's media was chosen to symbolise quality differences in a graphic way, as consumers struggled to understand the difference in technology. In October 2008 Taiyo Yuden partnered with JVC to form JVC Advanced Media as a marketing plan to distribute Taiyo Yuden media globally under the JVC brand name. Taiyo Yuden has also developed the Autostrategy technology, a learning mode for DVD burners, for Plextor. In mid-2015, Taiyo Yuden announced its intention to withdraw from the optical media business (including CD-R, DVD-R and BD-R) by December of that year. Taiyo Yuden sold its disc manufacturing patents and equipment to CMC Magnetics, and today the media is manufactured by CMC under the CMC Pro brand.

DVD media codes

DVD media manufactured by Taiyo Yuden have the following media codes:

Companies

The following companies belong to the Taiyo Yuden group:

Japan

China (Mainland)

Europe

Hong Kong

Korea

Malaysia

Philippines

Established in 1988 and located at the Mactan Export Zone 1 (MEZ1) industrial hub at Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu. Primarily pioneered the assembly and mass production of inductors for various electronic companies worldwide.

Singapore

Taiwan

Thailand

U.S.A.