Not many years ago, Japanese Electronics were undoubtedly considered the best in market.
National Panasonic, Sony, SHARP, Hitachi, JVC, Aiwa, Sanyo and Toshiba made products of such high quality that Indian consumers who owned BPL, Onida, Dianora or BUSH Televisions only dreamed of owning'Made In Japan' TVs. The'industry standard' Sony'Trinitron' TVs were probably beyond a dream until the mid-90s. Sony Walkman(the'Cassette i-Pod') with'Mega Bass' was a proud gadget. Japanese giants also made products like TVs, VCRs, CD/Cassette with radio equipped Audio systems and that would last for years without having the necessity to be serviced even once. But times have changed now.
Later in the early 21st century, the mobile phone and'Apple' revolutions took the world by storm. Apple launched a never before kind of gadget that could store thousands of songs in a pocket. Needless to introduce, it was the i-Pod. But it was only the beginning. Mobile phones started coming with powerful processors and more and more features such as High Resolution Cameras, MP3/Video Players etc. Yet, the Japanese heavyweights were unshakeable in consumer entertainment electronics enjoying major market shares.
Later, Apple released the i-Phone which changed the entire mobile landscape. Touch-Screen mobiles became the new fad making feature-phones made by the heavyweight NOKIA look obsolete. Samsung and HTC took the lead in this technology, followed by Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE and other major and minor Chinese brands. Outside the mobile phone segment, consumer markets shifted to digital media and games, software apps and the Internet. The Japanese failed to keep pace with these rapid changes. To add to their misery, the Yen value rose relentlessly and later came the tsunami.
In the TV industry, the bulky CRT TVs were replaced by the slim LCD and Plasma TVs. Almost none of the Japanese brands except Sony(BRAVIA), SHARP(AQUOS) and Panasonic(Viera Plasmas) managed the transition to flat-panel display televisions all that well. These three along with the now-extinct legendary Pioneer(KURO) reaped profits early on. But increased competition and tightening margins began to squeezed them. Other yesteryear TV stalwarts such as JVC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Toshiba & NEC exited the business. SHARP went almost bankrupt with record mounting losses upto US$ 4.87 billion. Panasonic wasn't far behind with losses counting around US$ 2 billion. Sony's losses were lesser due to its profits from non-electronics segments such as gaming consoles, music and the movies it makes. However by now, Sony VAIO is no more owned by SONY. Non-Japanese heavyweight PHILIPS suffered losses upto 1 billion Euros and hence sold its entire consumer electronics operations to Funai.
Simultaneously, in their place were companies such as LG and Samsung. These two focused on building higher quality LCD TVs, packing them with a larger array of features and selling them for a competitive price-and steadily boosted their share. By now they have easily crushed their Japanese rivals in features, CNET reviews' performance ratings and above all, the market share. Almost every Samsung LED TV outperformed SONY BRAVIAsin terms of picture quality(yeah, that's so unbelievable!). Now a days LG TVs are beating Samsung in terms of performance, setting a yardstick for LED TVs' picture quality. All the Japanese do is sit and watch their Korean and Asian rivals get bigger and better.
Is the era of Japanese Consumer-Electronics over?
