Japanese electronics firms

Japanese electronics firms
日本电子业

 

The mighty, fallen
从强盛走向衰落

 

Ex-world-beaters swallow their pride and do deals with foreign rivals
前世界强手收起了骄傲，开始同它的外国竞争对手合作

 

Mar 3rd 2011 | TOKYO | from the print edition

 

JAPAN'S electronics companies once epitomised its national power and defined late-20th-century consumer technology. Sony introduced the transistor radio and the Walkman. Toshiba was first to mass-produce laptops. Sharp―which got its name from inventing the mechanical pencil in 1915―pioneered solar cells and LCD screens. The companies earned their fortunes from running efficient operations at home that shipped in huge quantities to the West.

 

      日本的电子公司曾经是日本国力的缩影，并且决定了20世纪后期的消费技术。索尼公司发明了晶体管收音机和随身听，东芝是第一个大量生产笔记本电脑的公司，因为在1915年发明了机械铅笔而得名的夏普公司首创了太阳能电池和液晶显示屏。这些公司通过高效的运作而在国内生存下来，并且产品大量的销往西方国家。

 

But the world changed and Japanese technology firms did not keep up. They kept too many low-value activities in high-cost Japan for too long. They focused on satisfying domestic consumers with advanced features that didn't matter to customers elsewhere. And they were tardy in entering emerging markets. Over the past decade NEC and Hitachi posted returns on assets of around 2%. In an extraordinary reversal, last year Japan became a net importer of televisions and stereos (albeit often with a Japanese brand on the casing).

 

       然而，世界在变化，这些日本技术公司却没有跟上时代的脚步。很长一段时间，他们在高成本的日本进行了过多的低产值的活动。他们把精力放在了用先进功能来满足国内消费者，以至于忽略了其他国家的消费者。在进入新兴市场方面，他们总是表现的很迟缓。在过去的十年，NEC公司以及日立集团公布的资产回报率在2%左右。然而去年却有了一个非凡的逆转――日本变成了电视机和音响的净进口国（尽管机器的外壳上通常印着日本商标）。

 

In recent months the electronics companies have begun to overhaul their businesses by outsourcing operations and selling poorly performing units. And as they do so, they are striking alliances with Asian rivals that they once would have regarded as inferiors.

 

      最近几个月，日本的电子公司开始通过业务外包和卖掉业绩不佳的单位来翻身。因而，他们与曾经被他们忽视的亚洲竞争对手结成了引人注目的同盟。

 

The biggest changes are taking place at NEC, which is also the most ailing. On February 25th it agreed to sell 70% of its LCD-panel production business to AVIC, a Chinese company. A few weeks earlier NEC had partially exited the personal-computer business by creating a joint venture with Lenovo, a big Chinese computer maker. The deal is an implicit admission of failure: NEC is the top PC maker in Japan, with a 20% market share, but globally its share is less than 1%. It comes six years after IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo, and NEC's delay means it was stung with more losses and got less for the business.

 

      最大的变革来自于桎病最多的NEC公司。二月二十五号，它承诺向中国航空工业集团公司售出其70%的液晶面板生产业务。在此前的几个星期，NEC公司已与中国的大型电脑制造商联想集团建立了合资企业，从而部分退出了个人电脑业务。这项交易是对失败的默认：NEC公司是日本的顶级电脑制造商，在日本它占有20%的市场份额，但在全球的份额却不到1%。正是六年前，IBM公司把它的个人电脑部门出售给了联想集团，因而，NEC公司的退出意味着它被业务上的高损失和低利润刺痛了。

 

Toshiba said in December that it would outsource production of some logic chips. Samsung of South Korea will get some of the work. Toshiba's decision to collaborate with a company with which it competes fiercely in flash memory, among other things, is remarkable.

 

      东芝公司去年12月表示，它将外包一些逻辑芯片的生产业务。其中的一些将会外包给韩国的三星公司。同其它事情相比，东芝公司与它在闪存界竞争激烈的对手公司合作的这项决定是了不起的。

 

Taiwan's Hon Hai (also known as Foxconn), the world's biggest outsourced manufacturer, is moving in. Last year Sony sold control of its television factories in Mexico and Slovakia to Hon Hai and transferred production to it; half of the televisions it sells are now assembled by other firms under its "asset-light" strategy, compared with just 20% a year ago. Hon Hai is also said to be talking to Sharp about outsourcing some LCD-panel production; and to Hitachi Display, which makes small LCD screens for mobile phones, about buying a controlling stake.

 

      世界最大的外包厂商――台湾的鸿海集团（也称为富士康公司）正在袭入日本市场。去年，索尼公司把它在墨西哥和斯洛伐克的电视工厂控制权卖给了鸿海集团，同时也把生产转移了过去；基于"轻资产"战略，索尼公司现在售出的电视机中的一半是由其他公司来组装的，而去年同期只有20%。据说，鸿海集团同样在被夏普公司游说，关于外包一些液晶面板生产的业务。制作手机液晶屏幕的日立公司也在就购买控股权的问题对鸿海集团进行游说。

 

This flurry of deals shows how Taiwanese, South Korean and Chinese firms have caught up with Japanese ones. It also shows how the Japanese have realised that such foreign firms can be useful partners as well as deadly rivals. The deals let the Japanese firms exit capital-intensive, low-margin businesses in which scale is needed but the product is little differentiated. This frees them to focus on becoming premium-brand marketers of products, and providers of services allied to them, as well as on developing the next generation of gadgets―or that is their hope.

 

      这种交易乱舞说明中国台湾、南韩还有中国的电子公司已经胜过了日本的。这也说明，日本电子公司已经意识到这些外国公司不仅仅是致命的竞争对手，也可以是有用的合作伙伴。这些交易使得日本企业退出了资本密集型的低利润市场，这个市场的规模很可观，但是产品差异度很小。这可以使它们专注于优质品牌的产品的营销、与服务商结盟，同时也可使得它们致力于新一代小产品的开发，这些小产品有可能是它们未来的希望。

 

Japanese electronics firms remain powerhouses of innovation. Last month, as NEC announced its foreign tie-ups, the company also trumpeted the world's thinnest mobile phone (at 7.7 millimetres) and the first contactless fingerprint and finger-vein reader for biometric authentication. NEC in particular still has a long way to go in turning itself around, but the Japanese firms' technological strengths mean they should not be counted out yet.

 

      日本的电子公司仍然是创新性很强的团体。上个月，NEC公司在宣布其外国盟友的同时，也大肆宣扬了世界上最薄的手机（大概7.7毫米）以及第一部非接触式指纹和手指静脉生物身份识别验证阅读器。虽然NEC公司要想恢复以前的辉煌还有很长的路要走，但是由于日本企业的技术优势，我们不应该判定它们已经出局