Panasonic Corp's move to close its last plasma television factory completes a painful reckoning that has all but killed off Japan's TV industry, once the pride of the country's post-war rise to technological and economic power.
In a golden era that began in the 1970s, the country's TV makers brought cutting-edge yet affordable technology and brand names like Sony, the Trinitron and Panasonic into living rooms across the West, at the expense of U.S. and European rivals.
Source:NewsOnJapan
But after dominating the business for decades, companies like Sony Corp, Sharp Corp and Panasonic have taken less than a decade to slide into deep losses, becoming also-rans to a new breed of nimble, cash-rich rivals like Samsung Electronics.
Osaka-based Panasonic will pull out of the plasma TV business by the end of the financial year to March 2014, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters on Wednesday. The news was first reported by the Nikkei business daily.
The end has come sooner than expected, underlining company president Kazuhiro Tsuga's determination to weed out weak operations as he focuses on higher-margin products to end years of losses at the consumer electronics conglomerate.
All that will remain of Japan's TV manufacturing are three cutting-edge liquid crystal display (LCD) plants, with Sharp's partially owned by foreign players, and a few assembly plants. Storied Japanese brands such as Toshiba Corp and Hitachi Ltd are outsourcing the bulk of their sets to other manufacturers.
Like the U.S. and European companies they defeated in the industry decades ago, the Japanese can chalk up their fate as much to hungry competitors as to their own mistakes.
Source:NewsOnJapan
