User:Aizuku/Sandbox/Japanese Consumer Electronics

I'm trying to draft an update to Consumer electronics in Japan to reflect the recent downsizing and consolidating in the Japanese Consumer Electronics Industry. The problem with the article is its contents are based on old info (Jan 1994) from the Library of Congress. The content of this page are meant as notes and are not reflective of the final version.

Effects of the Lost Decade and following recessions on Japanese Consumer Electronics Industry

The Japanese electronics industry is downsizing. There is also the recent reported losses , the Japanese electronics industry is past its era of dominance. Low cost -which at one point was a key strength in Japan's competitiveness- of Korean, Taiwanese and Chinese electronics, helped erode Japanese companies market share outside Japan. Tougher S. Korean competition will force more Japanese companies to consolidate. Dropping demand inside Japan, after the Japanese asset price bubble's collapse and the following Lost Decade. The Japanese semiconductor industry declined by 15% in 2009. Particularly after the Q3 2008 collapse of the digital consumer market, the industry collectively lost more than $5.5bn by the end of March 2009.

• Sony-Ericsson, worldwide marketshare dropped from 7.2% in 2007 to 4.9% Q3 2009
• Panasonic (then Matsushita) sold its entire stake in JVC which then merged with Kenwood forming JVC Kenwood Holdings on October 1, 2008.
• Panasonic acquired Sanyo.
• Sony, Hitachi, Panasonic, Fujitsu, Sharp, NEC and Toshiba reported losses amounting to ¥2 trillion.
• Sony sold its fabs to Toshiba who is in talks about a joint fab with NEC.
• Sharp acquired 15% of Pioneer.
• Pioneer withdrew from the Plasma display business.
• TDK, a subsidiary of Imation, reports first loss in seven years, will cut 8,000 jobs.
• Oki Semiconductor became a part of ROHM Group effective October 1, 2008.
• In April 1, 2010 NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology merged forming Renesas Electronics which is set to be fourth largest semiconductor company according to iSuppli published data.
• Sony has agreed to sell some of its design and manufacturing facilities for small and medium-sized thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays to Kyocera. Kyocera will acquire the operations for TFT LCDs on June 1 from Sony Mobile Display Corp, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony.
• Elpida Memory sold ¥18.5billion worth of shares to Kingston Technology
• Hitachi plans on focusing on its core business and exit market segments it can't compete in.
• JVC Kenwood Inc announced it will end camcorder production in Japan.
• Toshiba, Fujitsu discuss merging mobile phone businesses, following the integration of mobile phone operations of NEC Corp, Hitachi Ltd and Casio Computer Co.
• On July 15, 2010 Sanyo agreed to sell its semiconductor operations to ON Semiconductor for $366 million to be completed before the end of 2010.
• July 29. 2010 Panasonic reached an agreement to acquire all of Panasonic Electric Works and Sanyo shares.

Since the the turn of the century of the 21st Japanese consumer electronics companies have been facing tougher competition from American, Korean and Taiwanese companies. With Japanese companies losing their top position in categories like portable media players, TVs and semiconductors. Hit hard by the economic crisis of 2008 Sony, Hitachi, Panasonic, Fujitsu, Sharp, NEC and Toshiba reported losses amounting to $17 billion. This has forced some of the smaller players like JVC and Kenwood to merge forming JVC Kenwood Holdings, and Renesas Technology and NEC Electronics -the semiconductors spinoff of NEC- to merge forming Renesas Electronics. Also some of the bigger players resorted to merging some of their operations as Hitachi, Casio and NEC and Fujitsu and Toshiba did with their cellphone business.

See Also

• Economy of Japan#Current economic issues
• Analysis of the decline by IBM