Taiyo Yuden

is a Japanese materials and electronics company, situated in Ueno, Taito, Tokyo, that helped pioneer recordable CD technology (CD-R) along with Sony and Philips in 1988. Founded 60 years ago, Taiyo Yuden currently operates factories in Japan, Singapore, Korea, China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Thailand. The company employs over ten thousand people worldwide and reports annual sales of more than $1 billion.

The current president of Taiyo Yuden is Yoshiro Kanzaki, who replaced Tomiji Kobayashi. Mitsugu Kawada is Honorary Chairman.

History

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.

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.

Effective March 1, 2006, the power supply factory in Mexico (formerly Taiyo Yuden de Mexico) was sold to Tamura Corporation.

The acquisition of Shoei Electronics Co., Ltd., formerly a subsidiary of Shoei Co., Ltd., took place March 1, 2007.

Products

Recording media

Taiyo Yuden's cakeboxes usually have a special form and a printed shrinkwrap foil (unlike other manufacturers using transparent shrinkwrap and a printed paper cylinder). The inner rings of the CD-R products are frosted.

Taiyo Yuden branded products are not common outside of Japan (where Taiyo Yuden media has a market share of about 60%) but unbranded CDs and DVDs are available from some online retailers. Rebranded Taiyo Yuden media can be found under Fujifilm, Fusion, Maxell (Maxell Music CD-R, Maxell CD-R Pro, and Maxell CD-R Music Pro (discontinued)), Miflop, Panasonic, Plextor, Sony (Sony Music CD-R (discontinued 2008)), TDK, and Verbatim Corporation brands. In Japan, Korea and Greece, Taiyo Yuden is distributing its own brand "That's".

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.

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

Infosmart of Hong Kong, Optodisc of Taiwan, and other manufacturers from Hong Kong, Macau, and China have been making discs which illegitimately use Taiyo Yuden's mediacodes and are prone to degradation and data loss. If those discs do not have one of these hub codes, they are most likely fakes and should be used with caution.

Taiyo Yuden has also developed the Autostrategy technology, a learning mode for DVD burners, for Plextor.

Companies

Japan

China (Mainland)

Europe

Hong Kong

Korea

Malaysia

Philippines

Singapore

Taiwan

Thailand

U.S.A.

References

External links

Category:Electronics companies of Japan