Sharp, Panasonic, Sony - Are Jap electronic giants dying?

[Bigfuck]

After so long, I think now they do have a mixture of networks including GSM.

Does not matter. Jap phones including iphones bought in Japan are sim locked. If it is sim free, NTT will collapse. People will laugh when you see what NTT does to see a client - They can send 6 staffs with 2 senior staffs to see you and just to say hi for 1-2hours. Know nothing about their product.

 

[Fook Seng]

mai leh.................liek that very few things made in Japan mah jialat...............

strange that Samsung doing well leh.................their products not cheap also............their quality better than the Japs meh............looks better maybe lah..........

the only way i'll buy Samsung/LG is if they're quite a bit cheaper than the Japs.................otherwise no point mah............

If you asked me this question 5 years ago whether I would buy Korean over Japanese if it is priced higher I would say no. But today I will look at the details and will buy if it is really better. Time has really changed things.

 

[krafty]

i had a BEng(hons) in EEE, i beckon these days, electronics are like commodities, value going up and down after the downturn from its peak 10 years ago. one fine day, it will be listed on the commodity exchange...tsk...tsk...:o

 

[GOD IS MY DOG]

If you asked me this question 5 years ago whether I would buy Korean over Japanese if it is priced higher I would say no. But today I will look at the details and will buy if it is really better. Time has really changed things.

of course if specs and quality really better then ok to buy lah......................

but most people just want a change so they buy Korean brands when they see more people buying it.................

just like Apple ipod lor.................sound not that great but since it's perceived to be cool................and so people buy when they see other people buy...........

 

[Fook Seng]

of course if specs and quality really better then ok to buy lah......................

Specs don't mean everything. Performance is more important. A larger processor does not equate to performance. Take a Formula One car. its engine is only 2.4 litre size and yet it will outperform every car on the road.

A larger screen does not equate to seeing more. You have to look at the number of pixels. And a larger number pixels does not equate to sharpness. You need to look at pixel density. And finally pixel density does not equate to the sharpness of the image. It depends on how far you place it away from your eyes.

So is image size. It depends on how far or near you place it from your eyes and not just the diagonal size of the display. I hope this will answer some questions regarding specs.

 

[B Man]

True. But to the masses, specs sell.. just do a search on the net and you will find a bunch of sites comparing specs.

On the engine, you can actually make/alter/modify a 2.4 camry engine behave like a f1 car but the engine will expire in an hour or less. Power vs reliability tradeoff.

Specs don't mean everything. Performance is more important. A larger processor does not equate to performance. Take a Formula One car. its engine is only 2.4 litre size and yet it will outperform every car on the road.

A larger screen does not equate to seeing more. You have to look at the number of pixels. And a larger number pixels does not equate to sharpness. You need to look at pixel density. And finally pixel density does not equate to the sharpness of the image. It depends on how far you place it away from your eyes.

So is image size. It depends on how far or near you place it from your eyes and not just the diagonal size of the display. I hope this will answer some questions regarding specs.

 

[Fook Seng]

True. But to the masses, specs sell.. just do a search on the net and you will find a bunch of sites comparing specs.

On the engine, you can actually make/alter/modify a 2.4 camry engine behave like a f1 car but the engine will expire in an hour or less. Power vs reliability tradeoff.

I agree that specs sell. That shows the effectiveness of the marketing, not the sophistication of the technology. F1 car engines in fact has to be made even more reliable than normal car otherwise they cannot finish the race. The reason they can fail during a race is because they are subject to stresses never encounter under normal conditions. A normal car wouldn't survive as long under similar conditions.

 

[singveld]

What happened to Japan's electronic giants?
Electronics giant Sharp has been losing money fast

Japan's electronic giants once ruled the world. Sony, Panasonic, Sharp were household names. Now those same companies are in deep trouble, losing billions of dollars a year. How have the mighty Japanese companies fallen so low? The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo looks at what went wrong.

If you want to get an idea of what's gone wrong with Japan's electronics industry go for a ride on the Tokyo metro.

The Tokyo metro (or a lot of it) now has 3G mobile reception. But you're not allowed to talk on your mobile phone on public transport in Japan, so everyone in my carriage was busily texting away on their 3G devices.

And what particular device were they using? A quick survey of the carriage I was in found about 80% were holding an Apple iPhone.

That's admittedly not a scientific result - but the evidence is pretty stark. Where once everyone would have been listening to a Sony Walkman, today it is Apple and Samsung that dominate, even here on Sony's home ground.

The evidence can also been seen in their financial results. Japan's electronic giants are bleeding red ink.

Sony may make a small profit this year, its first since 2008. Panasonic (formerly Matsushita) is expected to post a $9bn (£6bn) loss this year. Sharp, which is much smaller, is losing money so fast it will not survive another year without a major infusion of cash.

So what went wrong?

Digital challenge
According to Tokyo-based economist Gehard Fasol, the Japanese giants were overtaken by the digital revolution.

The Japanese giants, he says, actually built their empires on making complex electrical machines - colour televisions, radios, cassette players, refrigerators, washing machines.

Economist
Yes, they contained electronic components, but they were basically mechanical devices.

But then came the digital revolution, and the world changed.

"The Sony Walkman is a classic example," Gehard Fasol says. "It has no software in it. It is purely mechanical. Today you need to have software business models that are completely different."

The digital revolution not only changed the way electronic devices work, they changed the way they are made.

The whole manufacturing model shifted as companies moved production to low-cost countries. That has put huge downward pressure on profit margins for Japanese manufacturers.

"Look at Apple," Fasol says. "They make iPods and iPhones."

"Apple makes at least 50% profit margins on those. People say iPhones are made in China, but maybe only 3% of the value of an iPhone stays in China."

"So it's hard to become rich today on the scale of a Panasonic just by manufacturing - you have to do a lot more."

'Un-Japanese'

Mr Nakanishi decided to drop many of Hitachi's consumer electronics divisions
Unfortunately neither Panasonic nor Sharp responded to our repeated requests for interviews, so instead I went to see the boss of another Japanese manufacturing giant.

Hiroaki Nakanishi is the 66-year-old English-speaking president of Hitachi Corporation.

When he took over the reigns at the 100-year-old engineering giant in 2010 it too was bleeding red ink. Mr Nakanishi immediately decided to do something very un-Japanese. He closed or sold loss-making divisions, most of them in consumer electronics.

"Digital technology changed everything," he says.

"In the television industry it means that just one chip is now needed to produce a large and high quality TV picture. So now everybody can do it."

"That means the new players from Korea and China, they now have the advantage."

Hitachi had built its reputation on having the best technology. But now competition has switched to who has the best sales and marketing strategy, and the biggest advertising budgets. Mr Nakanishi says the Japanese companies just couldn't keep up.

"The structure of the industry had completely changed," he says. "We could not adjust to such an environment. So that is why I gave up those segments."

'Brain country'
Mr Nakanishi decided to return Hitachi to its core business: heavy engineering. Gas turbines, steam turbines, nuclear power plants, high-speed trains, these are the areas he believes Hitachi can still be a world beater, especially in the developing world.

"In developing countries they don't have specific planning and construction know-how [for big infrastructure projects], but we have," he says.

"It is not simply a case of selling machinery, but also the engineering, planning, even sometimes the financing of a project. That total process, that is our most important advantage."

Mr Nakanishi's strategy is working. Hitachi is back in profit. Hitachi trains are the front-runner in the competition to replace all of the UK's fleet of inter-city high-speed trains.

But it will not be as easy for the others.


Hitachi has switched its focus to heavy engineering
Sony is the strongest of the three. But even Sony makes far more money today out of selling life insurance than it does out of making electronics. Panasonic and Sharp have less to fall back on.

Gehard Fasol says that once again, just as they did back in the 1950s and 60s, the Japanese companies need to learn from America.

"It's no coincidence that many of the most successful companies today are in Silicon Valley," Mr Fasol says.

"Companies like Cisco or Oracle are not affected by the Korean competition. Japan has to become a brain country. It's a country like Switzerland or England."

"You have very high education and very clever people so you have to use that. Sometimes that value can be captured through manufacturing, but in other cases through software. And software has been neglected in Japan."

 

[singveld]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21998846

Fall of the Japanese electronics giants

2 April 2013 Last updated at 02:06 GMT Help
It has been 100 days since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in Japan.

More than three months into the job, the economy is showing little signs of a turnaround.

Mr Abe is pursuing an ultra-easy monetary policy, which he hopes will urge consumers to spend, and companies to invest.

But that could be a real challenge for the electronics sector.

Sony, Sharp, Panasonic - these electronic giants were once household names. Now they are in deep trouble. Panasonic is expected to post an $8bn loss this year. Meanwhile Sharp could post a loss of $5bn and potentially go bankrupt.

What led to the current state of these corporate giants?

 

[syed putra]

I tot the japs at one time had the fastest supercomputer. Do how come they say joss are no good in digital and software?

 

[Dark Knight]

All these Japanese firms were once only a "small player" in the domestic market.
One thing good about the Japanese government and Japanese Bank is that they are very supportive in grooming local firms into "big player" to help grow and sustain the own economy in the long run. These small firms has been able to gain financial support to provide jobs for their own local citizens, grow their company bigger and compete globally.

Compare this to what our Sillypore gahbrament did? The MIW simply rather groom their own GLCs by slashing all the local firms and not given them much chance to survive. You can see that most of the critical industry (shipping, aerospace, property, telecommunication, transportation etc) in Sillypore are all the GLCs. How many local firms can you find?

 

[Bigfuck]

I tot the japs at one time had the fastest supercomputer. Do how come they say joss are no good in digital and software?

NEC had the fastest computers in the early 90s. But they lost the market totally due to their fucked up management staffs. When they go overseas, they get paid 3 times more than in Japan when you include all the allowances and they keep blaming everyone but themselves. They risk adverse to new product developments. Kaizen is the mother of failures in Japan. It is called drop pants and fart - meaningless action. Kaikaku is not in the blood of Japanese as being different is a taboo in Japan. So as these useless stupid management staff continue to hold their position in the company, all major Japanese companies will collapse.

 

[Bigfuck]

All these Japanese firms were once only a "small player" in the domestic market.
One thing good about the Japanese government and Japanese Bank is that they are very supportive in grooming local firms into "big player" to help grow and sustain the own economy in the long run. These small firms has been able to gain financial support to provide jobs for their own local citizens, grow their company bigger and compete globally.

Compare this to what our Sillypore gahbrament did? The MIW simply rather groom their own GLCs by slashing all the local firms and not given them much chance to survive. You can see that most of the critical industry (shipping, aerospace, property, telecommunication, transportation etc) in Sillypore are all the GLCs. How many local firms can you find?

What you said stopped by the 70s in general. Then everyone became a bureaucrat to protect their rear end. That was when the mother of all fuckups continued, not to mention the selling of public debt to Japanese rather than overseas.

 

[Bigfuck]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21998846

Fall of the Japanese electronics giants

2 April 2013 Last updated at 02:06 GMT Help
It has been 100 days since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in Japan.

More than three months into the job, the economy is showing little signs of a turnaround.

Mr Abe is pursuing an ultra-easy monetary policy, which he hopes will urge consumers to spend, and companies to invest.

But that could be a real challenge for the electronics sector.

Sony, Sharp, Panasonic - these electronic giants were once household names. Now they are in deep trouble. Panasonic is expected to post an $8bn loss this year. Meanwhile Sharp could post a loss of $5bn and potentially go bankrupt.

What led to the current state of these corporate giants?

Japanese cowards in the management and in the Diet. BTW, these companies will be merged to bigger disasters in Japan. Nissan by Renault was due to Japanese management stupidity. It was never the intentional of Nissan to be bought over. They never studied their stuff overseas, bought non-controlling shares into Renault which provided Renault with sufficient financial resources to do a reverse buyover. You can imagine the face on the fucked up Japanese management staffs. BTW, Ghosn is only doing 101 financial housekeeping that any Singaporean manager can do. But it is impossible for a Japanese to do it.