is a manufacturer of

capacitor In electrical engineering, a capacitor is a device that stores electrical energy by accumulating electric charges on two closely spaced surfaces that are insulated from each other. The capacitor was originally known as the condenser, a term st ...

s of various types, and is one of the largest manufacturers of capacitors in the world, headquartered in Karasuma Oike, Nakagyō-ku,

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. In 1950, it separated from the Nii Works Co., established itself as Kansai-Nii Works and completed its first factory by 1956. In 1961, it adopted the ''Nichicon'' name and has been using it, or a variant thereof, ever since. In 2011 and 2012 Nichicon spun off several major factories into independent subsidiaries, and established representative branches in foreign countries, thus realigning its corporate infrastructure.

Early 2000s capacitor issues

From 2001 to 2004, Nichicon produced defective capacitors ("HM" and "HN" series) that were used by major computer manufacturers, including

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

, and

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

. No explanation has been given for the production runs of defective capacitors, but some sources claimed that these capacitors were either overfilled with electrolyte, or were constructed using electrolyte that was prone to leaking, causing premature failure in any equipment using them. This issue was not related to the Taiwanese capacitor plague. In 2010 Dell settled a

civil lawsuit A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. T ...

concerning its shipment of at least 11.8 million computers from May 2003 to July 2005 that used faulty Nichicon components and were prone to major failure.

References

External links

Nichicon Corporation
Electronics companies of Japan Capacitor manufacturers Manufacturing companies based in Kyoto Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Companies listed on the Osaka Exchange Electronics companies established in 1950 Japanese companies established in 1950 Japanese brands {{japan-company-stub