A Japanese firm said on Wednesday that it has developed the world's smallest ceramic capacitor, which is "so small you can barely see it."

The new electronic innovation was personally announced by Murata Manufacturing Executive Vice President Yukio Hamaji, who called the new invention as an insurance that Murata will remain the world's biggest capacitor producer.

"Murata has to be that place where everyone goes for a capacitor," Mr Hamaji told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The tiny capacitor, according to Murata engineers, measures 0.25 millimetre by 0.125 millimetre and further shrunk from the same component that the topnotch Japanese firm had unveiled eight years ago.

In theory, the development of the new Murata product would all the more ramp up its economic prospects as ceramic capacitors, which holds electric energy, are crucial modules that can be found on all appliances and electronic gadgets.

The tinier and more efficient the capacitor is, the better for gadget manufacturers which are racing to earn the big bucks by rolling out PCs, tablets and smartphones with longer battery life, richer functions and features, crisper image and video rendering and when possible, thinner and lighter.

Those would be realised, Murata said, if gadgets would come installed with the best capacitor there is.

The firm's latest achievement, Mr Hamaji said, should convince the tech world that Murata is the best capacitor provider and intends to hold on to that distinction for the longest possible time.

Murata indeed is the market leader in the field, with control of more than a third of the global capacitor industry and earnings of some $US7.5 billion in export shipments alone as of the company's latest financial results, AP said.

Yet the windfall from the new capacitor would not come any sooner as Murata itself has yet to identify the specific products that would employ its new offering.

Besides that, Mr Hamaji hinted too that pushing the minuscule capacitor out of Murata's production lines in large amounts was no easy task.

"You can imagine how difficult making something that small can be, and do it in mass production and in stable supply," the Murata executive has admitted to AP.

The component breakthrough, for now, is Murata's main weapon to keep its chief competitors at bay, foremost of which is Samsung, now holder of about 20 per cent of the world's capacitor market.

Murata, likewise, is assured for now that it will not suffer the same fate being confronted by other Japanese tech players, which have been absorbing series of losses in the face of unrelenting onslaughts coming from Chinese and South Korean rivals.