May 20th, 2009

The first USB 3.0 host controller in the world will be released by the manufacturer, NEC Electronics Corp, which is planning to begin sample shipments in the beginning of June 2009 and start volume production at one million units per month in September 2009.

NEC Electronics has begun detailed negotiations with PC manufacturers throughout the world, and the company forecast that a PC equipped with USB 3.0 ports will come out by the end of 2009 at the soonest.

The company expects USB 3.0 to feature in PCs by year 2009 and spread in earnest in and after 2010. USB 3.0-compatible PCs will account for about 30% of PCs in 2011 and 80% of PCs in 2012, the company forecast.

The number of PCs that support USB 3.0 will reach approximately 140 million units in 2011 and 340 million units in 2012, the company said. Besides, the company believes that USB 3.0 host controllers will be available in chipsets as well as standalone host controllers in 2011.

Before the release, the company has prepared the ?PD720200-related exhibitions and demonstrations at the SuperSpeed USB Developers Conference which is being held in Tokyo on May 20 and 21, 2009.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) represent an electric vehicle (EV) which is appropriate for short-distance driving and a gasoline vehicle which is suitable for long-distance driving.

The statement was made by Toyota Motor Europe (TME), the regional headquarters of Toyota in Europe, which also said that the therefore PHEV will be the “next hybrid vehicle” or an electric vehicle that comes after the hybrid vehicle.

There are two types of PHEVs, an EV-based PHEV and an HEV (hybrid electric vehicle)-based one, and that TME will focus on the latter. This is because it is easier to downsize the battery of HEV-based PHEV than that of EV-based PHEV, which does not use an engine, enabling to develop an optimum PHEV.

Besides, the results of an experiment in France, showed that PHEVs are suitable for normal driving. In the experiment, fuel economy and running distance of TME’s PHEVs were measured. It was carried out from November 2007 to June 2008 jointly with French electric power firm Electricite de France (EDF).

The results indicated that the fuel consumption of PHEVs is approximately 60% less than that of gasoline vehicles when the travel distance is about 25km. In the experiment, 80% of daily trips were less than 25km.

Sprint reportedly will start to sell its new advanced phone, Palm Pre, in the first week of June, after suffering dearly earlier in the decade for it focused on customers who are not really creditworthy.

To recover from the suffering, the company once struggled to integrate Nextel, a business-centric wireless carrier, with its more populist and mass-market promotional efforts.

Now the question is, could the Palm Pre be the device that brings lasting harmony to Sprint? Generally, the makers of a new generation of advanced phones - from the iPhone to those based on Google’s Android operating system - have characterized them as potentially satisfying both corporate users who have heavy data demands and consumers with growing demands for mobile media.

It seems natural for the company to make such an assertion, and to be sure, Sprint had some well-received phones in recent years, notably the Instinct, which was introduced last summer. But Sprint has particularly high hopes for the Pre.

Sanyo Electric Co Ltd said the company has achieved a cell conversion efficiency of 23% in the company’s heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer (HIT) solar cell, but the efficiency is on the research and development level instead of the volume production level.

The company, which previously attained a conversion efficiency of 22.3% at maximum on the research and development level, said that it will disclose the details in the near future.

Although the business is affected by the global recession, Sanyo will focus its management resources on the solar cell business and expects that it will certainly grow in the long run.

Sanyo estimates that the solar cell market in fiscal 2009 (April 2009 to March 2010) will stumble to 5GW, or smaller than that in the preceding fiscal year, because of the global recession and that it will grow to 6GW in fiscal 2010, 7GW in fiscal 2011 and 40GW in fiscal 2020 due to drawdown of fossil fuels and other factors. The company aims to gain a 10% market share in fiscal 2020.

In a bid to expand the market share, Sanyo will strengthen its cost competitiveness. Specifically, it will reduce production costs by, for example, manufacturing the Si wafers that are used in HIT solar cells in-house. The company will start to produce Si wafers at its Oregon plant in the US within fiscal 2009, aiming to increase the ratio of Si wafers that are manufactured in-house and used in its HIT solar cells to 20% in fiscal 2010.