Japanese consumer electronics industry

The Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese consumer electronics industry is one of the most prominent industries in the world and is the world's largest electronics manufacturer by companies such as Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

, Pentax

Pentax

Pentax is a brand name used by Hoya Corporation for its medical-related products & services and Pentax Ricoh Imaging Company for cameras, sport optics , etc. Hoya purchased and merged with the Japanese optics company on March 31, 2008. Hoya's Pentax imaging business was sold to Ricoh Company, Ltd...

, Casio

Casio

is a multinational electronic devices manufacturing company founded in 1946, with its headquarters in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Casio is best known for its electronic products, such as calculators, audio equipment, PDAs, cameras, musical instruments, and watches...

, Citizen Watches, Hitachi

Hitachi

Hitachi is a multinational corporation specializing in high-technology.Hitachi may also refer to:*Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan*Hitachi province, former province of Japan*Prince Hitachi and Princess Hitachi, members of the Japanese imperial family...

, Mitsubishi Electric

Mitsubishi Electric

is a multinational electronics and information technology company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group....

, Panasonic

Panasonic

Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...

, Roland

Roland Corporation

is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka on April 18, 1972, with ¥33 million in capital. In 2005 Roland's headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture. Today it has factories in Japan,...

, Sharp

Sharp Corporation

is a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products. Headquartered in Abeno-ku, Osaka, Japan, Sharp employs more than 55,580 people worldwide as of June 2011. The company was founded in September 1912 and takes its name from one of its founder's first...

, Canon, Epson, Yamaha

Yamaha

Yamaha may refer to:* Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services** Yamaha Motor Company, a Japanese motorized vehicle-producing company...

, Sanyo

Sanyo

is a major electronics company and member of the Fortune 500 whose headquarters is located in Moriguchi, Osaka prefecture, Japan. Sanyo targets the middle of the market and has over 230 Subsidiaries and Affiliates....

, Fujitsu

Fujitsu

is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....

, Korg

Korg

is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures electronic musical instruments, audio processors and guitar pedals, recording equipment, and electronic tuners...

, Fujifilm

Fujifilm

is a multinational photography and imaging company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.Fujifilm's principal activities are the development, production, sale and servicing of color photographic film, digital cameras, photofinishing equipment, color paper, photofinishing chemicals, medical imaging...

, JVC Kenwood Inc

JVC Kenwood Holdings

JVC Kenwood Holdings　 is a company formed from the merger of JVC and Kenwood Corporation on October 1st, 2008. Based in Yokohama, Kenwood Chairman Haruho Kawahara is the holding company's chairman, while JVC President Kunihiko Sato is company's president...

, Toshiba

Toshiba

is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...

, Pioneer

Pioneer Corporation

is a multinational corporation that specializes in digital entertainment products, based in Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan. The company was founded in 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair shop...

, Nikon

Nikon

, also known as just Nikon, is a multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging. Its products include cameras, binoculars, microscopes, measurement instruments, and the steppers used in the photolithography steps of semiconductor fabrication, of which...

, TDK

TDK

, formerly , is a Japanese company which manufactures electronic materials, electronic components, and recording and data-storage media, and markets them globally. Their motto is "Contribute to culture and industry through creativity"...

, Nintendo

Nintendo

is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....

, Olympus

Olympus Corporation

is a Japan-based manufacturer of optics and reprography products. Olympus was established on 12 October 1919, initially specializing in microscope and thermometer businesses. Its global headquarters are in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan, while its USA operations are based in Center Valley, Pennsylvania,...

, Star Micronics Co., Ltd

Star Micronics Co., Ltd

Founded in 1947, Star Micronics Co., Ltd is one of the world's largest Japanese printer manufacturers and has facilities for worldwide production, marketing and support. Although Star is large enough to feature on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, it is still a family run company. Star’s history began with...

etc.

History

After World War II

Postwar Japan

Postwar Japan refers to the period in Japanese history immediately following the end of World War II in 1945 to the present day. Before and during the war Japan was known as an empire but is now officially the .-Occupation and democratization:...

, Japanese business began to rapidly develop consumer electronics

Consumer electronics

Consumer electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver...

products using keiretsu

Keiretsu

A is a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings. It is a type of business group. The keiretsu has maintained dominance over the Japanese economy for the greater half of the twentieth century....

methods. By the 1980s, a relatively small number of industries dominated Japan's international trade

International trade

International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories. In most countries, such trade represents a significant share of gross domestic product...

and investment

Investment

Investment has different meanings in finance and economics. Finance investment is putting money into something with the expectation of gain, that upon thorough analysis, has a high degree of security for the principal amount, as well as security of return, within an expected period of time...

interaction with the rest of the world.

Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

was founded in 1946 by Masaru Ibuka

Masaru Ibuka

Masaru Ibuka was a Japanese electronics industrialist. He co-founded what is now Sony....

and Akio Morita

Akio Morita

Akio Morita KBE was a Japanese businessman and co-founder of Sony Corporation along with Masaru Ibuka.-Early life:...

and rapidly advanced in the electronics field. The invention of the pocket transistor radio

Transistor radio

A transistor radio is a small portable radio receiver using transistor-based circuitry. Following their development in 1954 they became the most popular electronic communication device in history, with billions manufactured during the 1960s and 1970s...

placed the company at the forefront of electronics development, both in Japan and worldwide. As other companies were formed to compete in this area, the consumer electronics industry became major export

Export

The term export is derived from the conceptual meaning as to ship the goods and services out of the port of a country. The seller of such goods and services is referred to as an "exporter" who is based in the country of export whereas the overseas based buyer is referred to as an "importer"...

ers that invested overseas in the 1980s. In 1991, 46.7 percent of color televisions and 87.3 percent of video cassette recorders produced in Japan were exported. The export shares of some products were too small to show separately in summary trade data, however audio tape recorder

Tape recorder

An audio tape recorder, tape deck, reel-to-reel tape deck, cassette deck or tape machine is an audio storage device that records and plays back sounds, including articulated voices, usually using magnetic tape, either wound on a reel or in a cassette, for storage...

s represented 2.9% of total Japanese exports in 1988, video cassette recorders 2.3 percent, radio receivers 0.8 percent, and television receivers 0.7 percent, totaling 6.7 percent.

These industries built Japan's success in developing commercial applications for the transistor

Transistor

A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and power. It is composed of a semiconductor material with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current...

in the 1950s and generations of semiconductor device

Semiconductor device

Semiconductor devices are electronic components that exploit the electronic properties of semiconductor materials, principally silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide, as well as organic semiconductors. Semiconductor devices have replaced thermionic devices in most applications...

s of the 1970s and 1980s. Output came from large, integrated electronics firms manufacturing semiconductor devices, consumer electronics, and computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

s. The companies’ international success came from continually pushing miniaturization

Miniaturization

Miniaturization is the creation of ever-smaller scales for mechanical, optical, and electronic products and devices...

and driving down manufacturing

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

costs.

The industry today

With a high concentration of electronics companies, dominant global market share in electronics, and high quality of its products, Japan is the largest consumer electronics manufacturer in the world. Japanese companies have a reputation for high quality and innovation, having introduced products such as the Sony Walkman and VHS

VHS

The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

recorder.

Japan's success overpowered the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

consumer electronics industry. Unproved charges of dumping and other predatory practices led to orderly marketing arrangement

Orderly marketing arrangement

An Orderly marketing arrangement is a bilateral arrangement whereby an exporting country agrees to reduce or restrict exports without the importing country having to make use of quotas, tariffs or other controls on imports....

s by Japan in 1977. Restraints limited the export of color televisions to 1.75 million units annually from 1977 to 1980. The agreement gave some protection to the United States' domestic industry. Japanese companies responded by investing in the United States, by the end of the 1980s, only one United States-owned television manufacturer remained. The Japanese electronic industry as a result has maintained its dominance in the market over the United States, and maintained its export strength in this field due to the high reputation of its electronics.

Japan's foreign direct investment

Foreign direct investment

Foreign direct investment or foreign investment refers to the net inflows of investment to acquire a lasting management interest in an enterprise operating in an economy other than that of the investor.. It is the sum of equity capital,other long-term capital, and short-term capital as shown in...

in the consumer electronics industry was motivated by protectionism

Protectionism

Protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and a variety of other government regulations designed to allow "fair competition" between imports and goods and services produced domestically.This...

and labor costs. After three years of voluntary export restraints, seven Japanese firms located plants in the United States by 1980. Japanese firms continued production of the most technologically-advanced products especially in Japan but also U.S., while shifting production of less-advanced products to developing countries, such as Taiwan.

Since the beginning of the 21st century Japanese electronics companies have been facing tougher competition from South Korea

South Korea

The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

n companies. For instance, Samsung Electronics

Samsung Electronics

Samsung Electronics is a South Korean multinational electronics and information technology company headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul...

’ operating profit is more than two times larger than the combined operating profit of nine of Japan’s largest consumer electronic companies. With Japanese companies losing their top position in categories like portable media players, TVs, computers 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

JVC Kenwood Holdings

, and Renesas Technology and NEC Electronics -the semiconductors arm of NEC- to merge forming Renesas Electronics

Renesas Electronics

is a Japanese semiconductor manufacturer. It is based in Tokyo and has manufacturing, design and sales operations in around 20 countries. Renesas is one of the world's largest manufacturers of semiconductor systems for mobile phones and automotive applications. It is the world's largest...

. In a similar move, in 2009 Panasonic

Panasonic

Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...

acquired a voting stock majority of Sanyo

Sanyo

, making the latter part of the Panasonic Group. 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.
On November 15, 2011, facing tough competition from Samsung and LG. Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi signed a deal to merge their LCD businesses. Creating a new company called Japan Display

Japan Display

On November 15, 2011, Sony, Hitachi, and Toshiba agreed to the integration of their small and medium size liquid crystal display panel businesses in conjunction with the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan . The merged businesses will be known as Japan Display. INCJ will be the largest...

by spring 2012.

External links

http://www.jeita.or.jp/Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association
Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association
The is a Japanese trade organization for the electronics and IT industries. It was formed in 2000 from two earlier organizations, the Electronic Industries Association of Japan and the Japan Electronic Industries Development Association.-See also:...

(JEITA)]
Japan Electric Manufacturers' Association (JEMA)
Japan Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Industry Association (JRAIA)
Japan Electric Measuring Instruments Manufacturers' Asscociation (JEMIMA)
Association for Electric Home Appliances
Industrial Structure Vision 2010 (METI) (full report, Electronics and IT sectors, Functional Chemical sector (p.190))
Japan

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