Japan electronics industry should consolidateEE Times / 20 Sep 2005 ----Under attack from lower-cost Asian competitors, Japan's fragmented electronics industry, must consolidate in order to achieve respectable profitability levels...the report, compiled from the Reuters Asia Technology and Telecoms Summit, noted that the operating profit margin of Japan's top 10 electronics makers in 2004 was a mere 2.8 percent ...
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...Low profitability is due in large part to the move to digital products, which made it easier for new Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean rivals to compete, Herman de Haan, the head of Japan operations at Netherlands-based Philips Electronics...
"Today, everybody can do it. The system is on the chip," de Hann said. Japan, however, has too many electronics makers to compete effectively, Fumiaki Sato, an electronics industry analyst at Deutsche Bank in Tokyo, was quoted as saying.
He noted that 10 Japanese mobile phone makers, including electronics giants NEC Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Sharp Corp., Toshiba Corp., and Hitachi Ltd, held a combined global market share of only 10 percent in the last business year, while none had more than 2 percent.
"Ten players are sharing a pie with a low level of productivity," he was quoted as saying.
