NEC TOKIN Corporation, located in Sendai City, Japan (president: Yuichi Haneta), has successfully developed further downsized versions of low-profile, low-ESR super capacitors (electric double-layer capacitors), which are increasingly expected as a future solution to the extended use of batteries for mobile appliances (as one example). These products will help to eliminate buffer shortage, which is expected to occur with increased data transmission capacities of mobile PCs and other appliances. The trend is for digital and mobile devices such as digital still cameras, PDAs, and mobile phones to be increasingly downsized. In addition, communications capacities, performance, and integrated capabilities are being enhanced rapidly, which will increase loads to batteries as the power source, affecting some elements such as equipment duration. In addition, further downsizing will limit battery space, which requires highly advanced power management, for example, each function must save power, as the amount of energy is limited. In particular, higher performance and further integration of functions require a large current to be supplied in a short time. Under the circumstances, the concern is how increases in battery voltage fluctuations will be controlled. As devices to solve this challenge by assisting peak current, we have been providing a lineup of thin, low-ESR HyperCapacitors used to extend the battery duration for digital still cameras (as one example). Data communications cards (GSM or GPRS) for mobile PCs and PDAs require a large amount of power that can transmit large data in a short time. For this reason, each of these devices is equipped with a tantalum capacitor to boost power. In the future, transmission capacities are bound to increase, requiring larger-capacity, lower-ESR capacitors for power boost. To address further downsizing of data communications cards and devices, we have added three products to our lineup, which have decreased by 35-71% in terms of how much space their components use compared to conventional products. These products will be released as the Super Capacitor HP series in April. For the time being, we plan to produce 200,000 units per month at NEC TOKIN Ceramics Corporation (Hyogo Prefecture, Japan) in consideration of further volume production depending on demand. Furthermore, a product about half as thick (1.2 mm) is under development. With this lineup expansion, our electric double-layer capacitors will be renamed and included in the Super Capacitor series in April (The designation of the HyperCapacitor series will be discontinued.). (Super Capacitor HP series)