Eurotechnology blames falling product prices, high costs at home, a strong yen, an inability to profit from the shift to software and services, intense foreign competition and a lack of focus for the problems of the Japanese tech giants.
Hitachi turnaround shows the way for Japan Inc
Hitachi is the beacon for troubled Japanese tech giants like Sony, Sharp, Panasonic and Renesas – all hit by flat sales growth for the past 15 years. according to Tokyo-based researchers Eurotechnology Japan.
Sharp, Sony and Panasonic lost a collective $19bn in the last financial year, say the researchers.
Hitachi hit trouble before any of these other companies with a $9.2bn loss in 2009 but it recovered to a $4bn profit in the last financial year.
Hitachi did the turnaround in the conventional modern way – closing high cost plants at home and outsourcing manufacturing to cheap plants abroad. A 400,000 workforce was reduced to 323,500 of which a third work overseas.