Japanese consumer electronics industry

The Japanese consumer electronics industry is a prominent industry and home to companies such as Sony, Casio, Hitachi, Denon, Toshiba, NEC, TDK, JVC, Panasonic, Roland, Fujitsu, Canon, Sharp, Fujifilm, Rohm, Plextor, Korg, Pioneer, Kyocera, Konica Minolta, Maxell, Mitsubishi, Technics, Ricoh, Pentax, Olympus, Nintendo, Sanyo, Epson, Nikon, Yamaha, Seiko, Citizen Watch, Kenwood. These companies primarily produce TVs, music players, refrigerators, game consoles, still and video cameras, pianos, computers, etc.

These companies are also into professional sectors such as the professional television, photo camera, monitor, and music equipment sectors.

History

After World War II, Japan started to develop consumer electronics products rapidly using the keiretsu methods and by companies that existed before the World War II like Hitachi, Sumitomo, Mitsubishi. Japan didn't have any other industry where it could make a significant impact, since natural resources were, and still are, very low in the islands.

A relatively small number of industries dominated Japan's trade and investment interaction with the rest of the world. During the late 1980s, the main export industries were motor vehicles, consumer electronics, semiconductors and other electronic components, iron, and steel. Sony was founded in 1946 by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita and they took off advancing in the electronics field rapidly. They each had skills that would bring it to the top of the industry, one with marketing savy and the other with great innovation. They had soon invented the first pocket transistor radio in the world. Many nations from around the world have invested in this Japanese industry. Now China’s products are increasingly more high-tech and it is draining investments and business from other countries in the region including Japan. The industries producing consumer electronics—receivers, compact disc players, other audio components, tape recorders, television receivers, video cassette recorders, and video cameras— were major exporters 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, but audio tape recorders 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 in the 1950s and generations of semiconductor devices of the 1970s and 1980s. Output came from large, integrated electronics firms manufacturing semiconductor devices, consumer electronics, and computers. The companies’ international success came from continually pushing miniaturization and driving down manufacturing costs through production innovations.

Japanese electronics today

Japan is unofficially the largest electronics manufacturer in the world because of its high concentration of companies in the country and the competition between the companies. One of the reasons of the success of Japanese electronics is that its products are often thought of as high quality, inventive (such as the Sony Walkman and VHS), and has highly regarded brands like Sony, Hitachi and JVC of which their products are priced relatively higher because of their reputation.

Japan's success overpowered the United States electronics industry. Charges of dumping and other predatory practices led to orderly marketing arrangements (voluntary export restraints) 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 others had disappeared or were bought by Western European or Japanese firms.

Japan pioneered the color television. Video cassette recorders, video cameras, and compact disc players were developed for the consumer market during the 1980s by Japanese firms.

Japan’s overseas investment in the consumer electronics industry was motivated by protectionism and labor costs, the main reason for Japanese color television plant establishment in the United States. 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, while shifting production of less-advanced products to developing countries, such as Taiwan. Moving production caused Japan’s export of color televisions to fall during the 1980s, from 2 percent of total exports in 1970 to only 0.7 percent in 1988.

References

• - Japan
• http://www.scee.com/about/sonyHistory.jhtml;jsessionid=PAG4JG1CLDT2QCQSBLWB2RQ