"Japan Light", which has been listed for 74 years, was delisted today.
The century-old Toshiba was delisted today.
On December 20, it was reported that Toshiba, a Japanese technology giant that has been listed for 74 years, will be delisted from the Tokyo ** Stock Exchange on Wednesday local time. In order to get out of the long-term management chaos, the company accepted the acquisition of Japan Industrial Partners (JIP), a domestic investment in Japan.
Toshiba, one of Japan's largest brands, has faced turmoil and scandals for more than a decade, and in 2015, Toshiba's brand image was tarnished by accounting fraud: In 2017, its subsidiary at a U.S. nuclear power plant went bankrupt, leaving Toshiba with huge losses and insolvent: Toshiba asked foreign investors** (i.e., activist shareholders) to invest to rebuild its financial foundation, further exacerbating the turmoil: Toshiba was forced** into businesses that were considered lucrative and promising, such as medical devices and semiconductor memory.
Toshiba, a prestigious company that will celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2025, has fallen into a slump in recent years. General electronics manufacturers, which produce a wide range of products from white goods to semiconductors, were once one of Japan's core industries, along with automobiles, but from around 2000 onwards, their performance began to deteriorate due to pressure from Asian companies. While Hitachi Group has achieved a revival by focusing on infrastructure and IT businesses, and Sony Group has focused on gaming, film, and ** fields, Toshiba's search for a way out in the nuclear power business has backfired.
The new structure will be led by JIP, with the goal of re-listing over the next five years or so. The challenge is whether the company can grow its data services business into a profitable pillar beyond the infrastructure business such as nuclear power plants, and increase its corporate value. At present, it is still debatable where the company can go in the future.
Why is the century-old Toshiba going to be delisted?
From the development of the world's first color TV in 1970**, the launch of the world's first color TV with a black striped cathode ray tube in 1972, to the creation of the world's first optical disc file generation system in 1979, to the development and sale of the world's first laptop computers in 1985, and the 90s, major breakthroughs in the fields of digital technology, mobile communication technology and network technology were also ......It can be said that Toshiba was once a well-deserved "pride of Japan" and played a pivotal role in Japan's manufacturing industry and even in the world.
In the world brand market, Toshiba is undoubtedly a very well-known brand, as a giant of Japanese enterprises, Toshiba once occupied an absolute dominant position in the market, Toshiba's products are even considered to be synonymous with high-quality products in the market, but this century-old giant has recently been delisted, listed for 74 years, why will Toshiba not stay?
Toshiba's difficulties are directly related to its repeated mistakes in the formulation of corporate strategy. In the 90s, as Japan's economic bubble burst, Toshiba also entered a comprehensive strategic contraction, reducing its investment in semiconductors, but this decision gave Samsung the opportunity to become the first in the global memory field in one fell swoop, and Toshiba was relegated to second;In the 21st century, Japan's electronics industry is in recession, and Toshiba, which seeks to transform, has set its sights on the nuclear power business, and finally spent $5.4 billion to acquire Westinghouse Electric under the competition with industry rivals, which is more than three times its expectations, but the business has not brought "sweetness" to Toshiba, but because of the serious nuclear leakage accident that occurred in Japan in 2011, Toshiba's nuclear power plant business has had a fatal impact;Later, Toshiba, which was facing a business loss crisis, was exposed to a financial fraud scandal in 2015, which caused serious damage to Toshiba's brand image.
A series of wrong decisions and actions put Toshiba in a passive situation. From the perspective of the external environment, with the increasingly fierce international competition and the continuous change of the business environment, the market is gradually moving from a seller's market to a buyer's market, which also means that enterprises need to face more uncertainties, need to grasp market trends and needs in a timely manner, and seize market development opportunities, and such requirements are undoubtedly subversive challenges for traditional enterprises with a large volume.
Looking back at the Japanese consumer electronics company, Toshiba is just a microcosm of it.
Japanese consumer electronics are shrinking across the board.
When it comes to Japan's consumer electronics industry, many people have the impression that it has been a big rout, and it has collapsed in the competition with Chinese and South Korean companies. Whether it is in the home appliance industry, or in the 3C field such as mobile phones, computers, and cameras, the Japanese consumer electronics industry, which once dominated the world, seems to have faded out of people's sight.
Around the nineties of the last century, it was the first era of Japanese household appliances, Japanese household appliances swept the world, and Japanese household appliances such as Sanyo, Panasonic, Toshiba, Hitachi and other Japanese household appliances brands are well known to women and childrenIn the field of consumer electronics, Sony, Roxy, Canon and Fujitsu lead the way in consumer fashion. Thirty years ago, Japanese home appliances and consumer electronics were the embodiment of quality of life in Chinese households. It is precisely by learning from Japan that China's home appliance industry has created a large number of domestic home appliance brands such as Haier, Midea, Gree, Changhong, Konka, Hisense, and Skyworth.
In recent years, China has risen in the field of consumer electronics. Color TVs, air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines and other household appliances industry has long been the world's major producers, Midea, Gree, Hisense, Haier and a large number of domestic brands shineAmong the 3C electronic products, mobile phones, computers and other products also have the rapid rise of many domestic brands such as Huawei, Lenovo, and OPPO. In today's market, Japanese home appliance brands have disappeared and are difficult to see. In the field of 3C electronic products such as mobile phones and computers, Japanese brands are almost nowhere to be seen.
Japanese consumer electronics giants such as Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba have been losing money year after year, the market has shrunk rapidly, and there have been serious difficulties in operation, and Japanese consumer electronics giants have chosen to withdraw from the field of home appliances and 3C electronics. At the same time, Chinese companies have strongly acquired the industrial fields that Japan has withdrawn from, Toshiba TV was acquired by Hisense Electric, Midea's acquisition of Toshiba's white electricity business, Foxconn's acquisition of Sharp, Lenovo's acquisition of NEC's personal computer business, etc., are all classic strokes of Chinese companies in recent years.
The overall contraction of Japanese consumer electronics brands in the market has a lot to do with their business philosophy.
Japanese companies emphasize technology over the market, and use technology to determine the market, resulting in a serious disconnect between products and the market. Lack of sense of cooperation leads to the difficulty of enterprises to break the bottleneck of development, Japan has a strong craftsman culture, strong R & D personnel can overcome everything in the field of technology, which not only develops the technical self-confidence of Japanese enterprises but also leads to their blind arrogance, so as to lack of sense of cooperation.
At the same time, after the growth of Chinese enterprises, there is overcapacity in the home appliance industry. Chinese companies rely on large-scale production and low-cost labor to firmly grasp the competitive advantage of this market, and the Japanese consumer electronics industry cannot compete with it. The positioning of Japanese companies is basically profit-oriented, and the pursuit of excess profits of products through high-end positioning is incompatible with the competition model of small profits and quick turnover in the home appliance industry.
However, it should be noted that the Japanese consumer electronics giants have withdrawn from the field of hardware manufacturing and focused on the research and development of upstream core technologies and parts manufacturing, just as IBM in 2004 gave Lenovo a reason for the PC business that does not have a competitive advantage.
In the upstream of the electronics industry, although Japan has lost its lithography machine, it has gained a supremacy in semiconductor materials. Of the 19 major semiconductor materials, 14 have a market share of more than 50% in Japan.
In the field of the latest generation of EUV photoresists, three Japanese companies have applied for more than 80% of the patents in the industry. In the field of electronic passive components, Murata and TDK occupy nearly 80% of the global share.
From this point of view, the voice of Japanese companies in the semiconductor ** chain has not been weakened much, and its contraction can also be understood as another transformation.