The consumer electronics industry has been an important part of Japan’s economy since the country’s rapid economic growth phase in the 1950s and 1960s. In the decades that followed, Japan was one of the leading nations both in terms of patent applications for new technologies and the value of exported goods. The technological advancements led to a fast transformation of the most prized status symbols for Japanese citizens, from black-and-white TVs and electric refrigerators in the late 1950s to digital cameras and DVD recorders in the 2000s, to robot vacuum cleaners and
Global competition
In the 2000s, the industry fell behind in the global ranking and struggled to maintain its leading role in various areas, such as televisions and PCs. The shift in leadership has become especially apparent in the Japanese smartphone market, which came to be dominated by
Apple Inc. The downturn of the industry led to financial constraints for major general electrical manufacturers such as Toshiba Corporation and Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., which reacted by selling off parts of their consumer electronics related businesses. Sharp Corporation, established in 1912 in Tokyo, became the first large Japanese electronics manufacturer to be acquired by an overseas company when it joined with the Taiwanese electronics company
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. (Foxconn Technology Group) in 2016. Prior to this acquisition, the company had suffered severe economic losses due to changing market situations in the LCD market and an unprofitable solar cell business.
Implementing new technologies
While some companies that once were considered large manufacturers of general electronics have shifted their focus to other industries, like the energy sector, other companies continue to generate stable profits from consumer electronics. One growth area are devices and appliances equipped with
Internet of Things (IoT) technologies that can be connected to other devices or be controlled remotely via smartphones or smart speakers. Panasonic, for example, extended its home appliances business to smart homes under the trade name ‘HomeX’ in 2018. Other manufacturers, such as Hitachi, increasingly promote consumer electronics with integrated
Artificial Intelligence (AI) – washing machines with automated load balancing, for instance. Consumer electronics with IoT capabilities and AI can be expected to become increasingly important for the Japanese consumer electronics industry.
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