It's time the Japan OEMs remembered how to market themselves.

Market share for Japanese electronics companies began to erode in the early 2000s. Shrinking sales were felt everywhere in the global market, but especially hard hit were Japanese consumer electronics makers. Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Sanyo, Toshiba, Hitachi and other Japanese manufacturers were the predominant brands found in the big box stores. Consumer Electronics inventories at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and other large retailers now come from manufacturers in Korea, Taiwan and China. Japanese brands have a negligible market share in the North American market.

Sanyo is the only Japanese brand bucking this trend. Sanyo can be found on the shelves of the big box stores. How is this Japanese company competing effectively against their Asian competition? Didn’t Sanyo go out of business amid an accounting scandal? Yup, the whole company was sold to Panasonic several years ago during this accounting scandal. Let’s see what’s really happening with Sanyo.

Panasonic acquired Sanyo, and sold the brand names “Sanyo” and “AQUA” to the Haier Group -– a major electronics company in China – for about $10 million. Haier is one of the major brands in China, but did not have a large global market share. Haier decided to market the brand name Sanyo as a “Made In Japan” product. The reason for this is consumers are still wary of purchasing items made in China, even at lower prices. The quality issue has plagued Chinese manufacturers for many years. Haier does not clearly communicate whether Sanyo is Japanese made or Chinese made. Haier has gained a considerable market share in the LCD TV and white goods segments in North America, and decided to begin a marketing campaign using the AQUA brand name.

A business evaluation of Panasonic concluded that the company is very strong at marketing and sales, but fall short in the technology department. Considering the business performance of Panasonic over the past several years, it are living up to this evaluation because it have not contributed anything significant in the consumer electronics segment. One could now argue that it is losing its marketing and sales strengths. It sold the Sanyo name!

Panasonic did not understand the value of the brand names and underestimated its value when it sold it. Panasonic is not alone with this shortfall – other large electronics companies in Japan are not taking advantage of the equity built over the years in some of their brand names. They should go back to marketing basics and start using these brand names that consumers can recognize and feel confident about the quality.

Dominique K. Numakura, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

DKN Research, www.dknresearchllc.com

DKN Research Newsletter #1618, June 19th, 2016 (English Edition) (Micro Electronics & Packaging)

For newsletter archives visit dknresearchllc.com/DKNRArchive/Newsletter/Newsletter.html

Headlines of the Week

1. Omron developed a new wiring process on molded housing with inkjet printing. The new process will eliminate traditional printed circuits.
2. DNP expanded manufacturing capacity of templates for nano print processes for NAND flash memories.
3. NEC developed an optical fiber wireless telecommunication system for inconvenient circumstances such as tall buildings and underground.
4. AIST codeveloped a secondary battery system with Tsukuba University. It is less expensive and ecologically friendly because it does not use rare earth minerals.
5. Tohoku University codeveloped a high performance bearing system with ZnO coating for small-sized jet engine power generators.
6. Hitachi Maxell will double manufacturing capacity of MnO2Li CR batteries for smart meter applications.
7. Screen Holdings rolled out an optical inspection system “IM-4100” for assembling lines with multiple products.
8. Toshiba developed am FPGA device with non-volatile memory technology. The new device provides lower cost and smaller area size.
9. Nissan Motors unveiled a fuel cell battery system called “e-Bio Fuel Cell” for electric vehicles. It is a solid-state device that generates electric power from ethanol and natural gas.
10. Aval Data commercialized a new near-field infrared camera, "A-001IR," with an InGaAs sensor. Wave length: 950 ~ 1700 nm. It works between 1 micro sec. and 10ms.