Japanese home appliance giant loses growth engine

Sharp's recently announced results show that the net loss in FY2012 was 545.3 billion yen, which was the highest record in history. In fiscal year 2011, Sharp suffered a loss of 376 billion yen, which was a huge loss for two consecutive years.

The financial report released by Matsushita recently announced that in fiscal year 2012, Matsushita’s net loss was 754.2 billion yen, which was a huge loss again after a net loss of 772.1 billion yen in fiscal year 2011. The main reason is that the sales of flat-panel TVs have been poor, and the performance deterioration has led to a decrease in the value of mobile phones, solar cells and other enterprises, and they have been facing huge losses, resulting in huge losses in the entire fiscal year.

According to the financial report released, although Sony's net profit for fiscal year 2012 was 43 billion yen (net loss of 456.6 billion yen in fiscal year 2011) and it turned profitable for the first time in five years, one of the important reasons for profitability was due to the sale of New York. US headquarters building and other assets.

In order to bear the operational responsibility, Sony Corporation decided that all executive directors, business executive directors, and directors of its electronic product business subsidiary will have a total of about 40 people who will fully refund the bonus for fiscal year 2012. There are no precedents for full refund of bonuses by executive directors and subsidiaries. After refunding the bonus, the annual income of the directors will be reduced by 3 to 50%.

Japan’s Matsushita Corporation also decided that from July onwards, the director’s remuneration will be halved over the same period last year. For the current vice president Chang Rong Zhou Zuo who will be promoted to chairman at the end of June, the director’s salary will also be halved. Other directors reduced by 20%.

Sharp's decision-makers implemented a big shake-up. Overseas experienced Takahashi Hiroshi's three vice presidents were promoted to the president. Mr. Okuda Takashi, who only took office for one year, withdrew from the decision-making tier, and took the position of chairman Kiyama Yamato as the technical advisor. The number of existing decision makers has been reduced from 12 to 9 in order to increase the efficiency of decision-making. Takahashi Hoshizo made great achievements in exploring overseas markets. The motto was "not desperate". It should have been a pleasure for the vice president to take office as the president. However, he was shed tears and he only knew what he felt.

According to the “Yomiuri Shimbun” report, Sony CEO Howard Stringer and Panasong’s president, Masahiro Ohtsuo, will also step down in June. Due to competition with South Korea, investment in flat-panel TVs will become the culprit for the losses of these three companies. Like Mt. Kazuo Yamashiro, he must bear the responsibility of over-emphasizing television in the past and causing business deterioration.

Although television has become the culprit of losses, Japanese electronics makers also believe that TV cannot be used as a core business, but Matsushita and other large-scale consumer electronics companies are still looking forward to television and have launched "smart TVs." New products increase the ability to connect computers and interact with smartphones to compensate for the poor performance of flat-panel TVs: Panasonic launched the "Smart V IE RAVT 60 Series" as a large-screen model that can simultaneously enjoy TV and network video; Sharp introduced The 24-inch LCD TV “Smart Life AQUOS” can enjoy movies and e-book information in smart phones through wireless technology on the TV screen. This is a product designed for young consumers who love smart phones; in order to revive their home appliances, Sony will launch a "4K TV" with 4 times the pixels of high-definition television in the past. It will be available in June and can be used to search for programs and online videos at the same time. Although smart TV has a certain market demand, it is not enough to change the fate of the company. In addition, Sharp’s plan to re-establish business operations is to make a fuss on LCD screens and cooperate with Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea to expand the sales of LCD screens for smart phones. Panasonic intends to develop devices related to vehicle-mounted devices.

Overall, Japanese home appliance giants have not found a growth engine that can replace TV. How to introduce new products that can enable companies to regenerate is a common issue for them.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the sharp depreciation of the yen has little benefit to Japan’s electronics industry relying on exports. According to the report of Asahi Shimbun, the depreciation of the yen only brings 3.8 billion yen to Japan’s eight major electronics manufacturers. This contrasts with the effect of bringing 250 billion yen to 8 automakers. At the same time, due to the increase in the cost of raw materials purchased, the Japanese electronics manufacturers passed on the cost to the customers. Raising the price of the products may lead to sluggish sales. This shows that the devaluation of the yen is also a double-edged sword for the Japanese electrical industry.