ROHM is a well-known semiconductor industry leader with its roots in Japan. The company started its journey by registering its first patent for a breakthrough utility model called a ‘parallel lead-type fixed resistor’ in 1958, and today it is credited for hundreds of such patents. The company has covered a huge gap so far, and presently, it is one of the major manufacturers and marketers of semiconductor products. Today, the company is expanded to most of the major countries in the world, and as of 2017, 21,308 employees are working for the company globally.
Establishment of ROHM
Initially, ROHM Semiconductors started as Toyo Electronics Industry Corporation, a small electronic parts manufacturing company, in 1958. The company was founded by Kenichiro Sato in Japan. Toyo Electronics was into manufacturing resistors, transistors, and other electronic equipment.
In 1962, ROHM started to manufacture the automatic resistor assembly machine in-house, and the next year, it started to market and develop metal-firm resistors. In 1966, the company was rebranded as ROHM Wako Co., Ltd. With the new name, the company started to manufacture transistors and switching diode, and by the end of the 60s, it also began to work on ICs. The company established its other divisions, including ROHM Apollo Co., Ltd., and ROHM Logistec Co., Ltd., to focus on the new technologies coming.
In 1970, ROHM became the first company in Japan to establish a subsidiary in the U.S. The company started its sales office and an IC design center in Silicon Valley. The said center became the place for the company where it was doing the research work and was developing the ICs. After this expansion, ROHM also entered Asian countries like South Korea, Hong Kong and established ROHM Electronics Asia Pte. Ltd. ROHM also began to invest in LEDs, square-plante chip resistors, rectifying diodes, and network resistors in the same decade.
In 1981, the name of the company was officially changed from Toyo Electronics Industry Corporation to ROHM Co., Ltd. The company also published the “Asian Music”, where it recorded tapes of all volumes. In 1983, the company was listed on the Osaka Security Exchange for the first time. The arrival of Zener diodes and digital transistors in the mid-80s provided ROHM to explore new opportunities.
ROHM became the first company in the world to successfully complete its experiments using the laser diodes with MBE methodology, in 1984. The next year, the company developed its first 4-bit and 8-bit microcontrollers using original CPUs. In 1986, the company listed on the First Section of the Osaka Stock Exchange, and in 1989, it was listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It also established the Research and Development Center in 1986. By this time, the company was working on new memory ICs, capacitors as well as liquid crystal process technology. It also established a manufacturing plant in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, the U.K., and Taiwan by the end of the decade.
Growth of the Company
In 1991, the company launched the ROHM Music Foundation. In the next two years, the company was making and marketing the large size LCD public displays and had obtained the ISO9001 certification. In 1995, ROHM partnered with Zycad Corporation of the United States to develop a 100,000 gate FPGA using flash technology. The company opened the VLSI Research Center in 1998. The same year, ROHM started to develop the Dual-Cell system EEPROM and highly reliable Schottky barrier diodes. In 1999, ROHM established its technology centers in Kyoto and Hong Kong. It also started to develop ICs for mobile phones in the same year.
In 2000, ROHM came with a revolutionary concept in system LSI design technology, named REAL SOCKET™, and established the Europe Technology Center. In 2003, the company brought a new platform design environment for the system LSI, naming it the REAL PLATFORM, and in 2006, the company developed the ultra-compact LED “PICOLEDTM. It introduced the world’s first IEEE802.1X-compatible baseband IC for wireless LAN applications in 2007.
In 2010, ROHM introduced the world’s first laser diode to control the beam direction. The next year, the company entered the Indian and the Brazilian markets. In 2012, ROHM was mass-producing the full SiC power modules, LDO regulators, the world’s smallest transistor package, and the industry’s first SiC MOS module with no Schottky barrier diode. In 2013, ROHM partnered with Intel to build a low power consumption power management IC to be used in Intel’s next-generation Atom™ processors.
In the next five years, ROHM developed the industry’s smallest transistors, the first Wi-SUN-compatible universal wireless communication module, the world’s first automotive LDO regulators, and the world’s first trench-type SiC MOSFET.
The Founder: Kenichiro Sato
ROHM was founded by Kenichiro Sato in 1958 in Japan. Sato was born in Tokyo and completed his education at Ritsumeikan University. During his studies, he got to know about resistors and decided to start a resistor manufacturing company. So, he founded the company as Toyo Denki Seisakusho in Kyoto in 1958, while he was still a student.
Apart from making resistors and transistors, Sato was fond of music and was a trained pianist. He even established a music school in 1991 to promote classical music. Sato died at the age of 88 in 2020 after suffering from a long-going illness.
The CEO: Isao Matsumoto
Isao Matsumoto is the serving President and Chief Executive Officer of ROHM as of 2020. Matsumoto had joined the company in 1985 and has been working in different positions and roles for the past 35 years. Before becoming the CEO, he was working as the Director and the Managing Executive Officer of ROHM. He has also been a member of the ROHM board for past many years.
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