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According to Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun’s news report on November 3, due to the increase of global demand, Japanese lithium-ion battery manufacturers have sped up and expanded the capacity for smart phones and gaming devices. In addition, because Maxell Holdings received new orders from international and local smart phone manufacturers in 2017, it plans to introduce equipment into Chinese plants in November, 2017 to increase capacity.
TDK plans to increase the annual capacity by around 15% in 2018; Murata Manufacturing, which acquired Sony’s battery business in September, plans to invest approximately 50 billion yen by the end of March, 2020 to expand capacity. The goal is to get out of the red for battery business within two to three years.
Based on the information of Fuji Keizai, the market size of small-sized lithium-ion battery in 2020 is expected to increase to 1.7131 trillion yen, which represents an increase of 27.3% compared with 2016.
According to the information of Japanese research company Techno Systems Research, the current lithium-ion battery leading manufacturer in the world is Japan’s Panasonic, with market share 23%, followed by Korea’s Samsung SDI, with market share 21%. The rests are South Korea’s LG Chem (market share is 14%), TDK (11%), Murata (8%), China’s Tianjin Lishen Battery (6%), China’s BAK (4%), China’s BYD (4%) and Maxell (1%).
Nikkei reported on October 26 that because of the rapid popularity of EV in China and Europe, Panasonic planned to expand the capacity of EV’s lithium-ion battery in Japan, China and the US at the same time. The total investment amount of the three places is expected to reach 100 billion yen.
(Photo source: TechNews)