标题: Panasonic, and Lenovo, in Real Estate Development [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 2-7-2014 12:00 标题: Panasonic, and Lenovo, in Real Estate Development Kana Inagaki, Panasonic: We’re Not Just Plasma TVs; Solar Panels, airplane entertainment systems help offset fading consumer business. Wall Street Journal, Feb 5, 2014
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303743604579350482350884064
Quote:
(a) “For the nine months through December, Panasonic's consumer segments—including TVs, digital cameras and household appliances—accounted for 36% of total sales, while housing and auto-parts businesses (which include solar panels, car navigation systems and lithium-ion batteries) made up about 60%.
“Underscoring its transition [away from consumer electronics--or hardware--that has been in the red], Panasonic said Tuesday its net profit for the October-December quarter increased 20% from a year earlier to ¥73.7 billion ($730 million), helped by robust sales in its housing and auto businesses.
(b) “Increasingly [Panasonic president 社長 Kazuhiro] TSUGA 津賀 一宏 is bringing the company's little-known aviation business to the forefront, often citing it as one of Panasonic's three healthier businesses next to auto and housing, which includes solar panels.
“The aviation business—which is part of its electronics segment because of the overlap in technologies—dates back to the late 1970s when it began making speakers for airlines. In 2011, Panasonic had a 52% share in the global market for in-flight entertainment, followed by French electronics system maker Thales SA's 17%, according to consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. More recently, industry watchers say Panasonic's share is over 70%. 作者: choi 时间: 2-7-2014 12:00
Eric Pfanner, Aiming to Reinvent Itself, Panasonic Moves Beyond the Living Room; Taking aim at two less visible but more profitable areas: homes and cars. New York Times, Dec 28, 2013 www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/busin ... he-living-room.html
Quote:
“Consumer electronics like those that were once made at Fujisawa provided the foundation for Japan’s postwar economic miracle. But in recent years, South Korea and Silicon Valley have moved to the fore in technological innovation and marketing, while China has taken the lead in manufacturing. So Panasonic is trying to reinvent itself as a provider of less visible but more profitable industrial technologies. It is focusing on two areas: homes and automobiles, where it supplies battery cells to makers of electric cars, like Tesla Motors.
“Others [other Japanese makers of consumer electronics], like Toshiba, Hitachi and NEC, were just going back to their roots as providers of industrial equipment like power turbines, mining tools or telecommunications gear. Panasonic, founded by Konosuke Matsushita in 1918, started as a maker of consumer lighting fixtures. Panasonic’s biggest Japanese rival in consumer electronics has long been Sony, which is sticking with smartphones, TVs, cameras and other devices despite tough times. And even Sony has been doing better with some behind-the-scenes products, like sensors for smartphone cameras, than with some of its own branded electronics.
Note:
(a) “Fujisawa, Japan[:] Panasonic used to make [consumer electronics] in this suburb of Tokyo. Now, six years after closing its factories in Fujisawa, the company is building homes on the site, which is sandwiched between Mount Fuji and the Pacific. With several partners, Panasonic plans to erect 1,000 houses in Fujisawa, using them to showcase its clean-energy technologies. * * * bearing the name of the company’s residential division, PanaHome [displayed both in English and in katakana パナホ-ム]”
(i) Fujisawa, Kanagawa 神奈川県 藤沢市
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujisawa,_Kanagawa
borders on Tokyo.
(ii) Please take notice that the “fuji” in the city name (meaning “wisteria”) is different from that of Mount Fuji.
(iii) “Mount Fuji lies about 100 kilometres (60 mi) south-west of Tokyo, and can be seen from there on a clear day.” Wikipedia
(b) “Panasonic once tried to match Sony move for move. In the heyday of Japan’s dominance in consumer electronics, in the 1970s and ’80s, it was the brand that people chose when they really wanted a Sony Walkman or Trinitron TV but could not quite afford those brands.
In 1990, a year after Sony acquired Columbia Pictures, Panasonic, then known as the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, bought another American entertainment business, MCA. But Panasonic, which is based in Japan’s down-to-earth second city, Osaka — Sony has its headquarters in the more worldly capital, Tokyo — struggled to make sense of Hollywood. Only five years later, it sold MCA to the Seagram Company.
(i) “Panasonic was founded in 1918 by Konosuke [should be “Kōnosuke”] MATSUSHITA 松下 幸之助 [1894-1989] as a vendor of duplex lamp sockets [whose link points to another Wiki page titled “lightbulb sockets”]. In 1927, it began producing bicycle lamps, the first product which it marketed under the brand name National.”
(ii) Search images.google with “lightbulb socket” and you will immediately recognize it.
(iii) Japanese Wikipedia on Panasonic: “世界展開により、「松下」「ナショナル」「パナソニック」の名称を使い分けることによるデメリットが年々増大し、ブランドイメージの統一が課題となっていた。 そこで、松下幸之助の存命中から海外で知名度の高い「パナソニック」への統一が検討されていたが、幸之助が激怒したため棚上げになった。 * * * [section 3.1] パナソニックの由来[:] Pan a Sonicより。「全ての」の意の「PAN」と「音」を意味する「SONIC」からなる。”
translation: As the company expanded globally, the demerit of separate brand names (松下, National and Panasonic) increased year after year, and unifying them became necessary. The brand name Panasonic was well known abroad even while the founder 松下幸之助 was alive, so that name was favored. Still an angered 幸之助 made the plan shelved. * * * [section 3.1] Origin of Panasonic[:] From Pan a Sonic, where “PAN” means “all” and “SONIC,” “sound.” (The name change to Panasonic was official in 2008, 19 years after the founder’s death.)
(c) “Since then, the decline in the Japanese electronics industry has claimed several onetime stalwarts, including Sanyo, which was started by a brother-in-law of Mr Matsushita’s in 1947. Panasonic took over what was left of the company in several stages, from 2008 through 2011.
After it acquired Sanyo, Panasonic accelerated its restructuring, cutting tens of thousands of jobs from the combined group, closing factories and getting out of several unprofitable businesses. The company’s president, Kazuhiro Tsuga, has announced plans to stop making plasma televisions [total stop in December 2013] and consumer smartphones and to scale back output of digital cameras. In September, Panasonic said it planned to sell a majority stake in its health care business to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the private equity firm. In November, it said it would stop making printed circuit boards, which are used in smartphones and other devices, at four of its plants in 2015.”
Sanyo 三洋電機株式会社
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanyo
(transliteration: San'yō; "Sanyo was founded when Toshio IUE 井植 歳男 (1902–1969), the brother-in-law of Konosuke Matsushita and also a former Matsushita employee, was lent an unused Matsushita plant in 1947 and used it to make bicycle generator lamps. Sanyo was incorporated in 1950)
(d) “From the living room, Panasonic is moving into the garage. In October, it signed a deal to increase its supply of battery cells to Tesla Motors, the American maker of high-performance electric cars, providing two billion lithium-ion cells to the company over four years. * * * ‘Tesla has the best car battery in the world right now,’ said Bruce M Belzowski, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. ‘Panasonic has got to be getting some halo effect from that.’ Panasonic is predicting comparable growth in businesses related to housing, where it predicts sales of ¥2 trillion in the 2019 fiscal year, up from ¥1.1 trillion in the most recent year. It is focusing on so-called smart home technologies like those being installed at Fujisawa, including solar power systems, LED lighting and sensors for reducing energy consumption. The company is not giving up entirely on consumer electronics. It plans to continue making LCD televisions, which generally cost less than plasma models with screens of comparable sizes. * * * For the first six months of the current financial year, through September, Panasonic reported a 2 percent increase in sales. Adjusted for swings in foreign-exchange rates, however, revenue actually fell 8 percent. * * * Yet other analysts say it makes sense for the company to keep a limited presence in consumer-focused businesses, despite the challenges, because of the visibility attached to them.”
作者: choi 时间: 2-7-2014 12:01
Bill Alpert, Hits, Misses, and Stealth Realty Plays. Barron’s, Dec 28, 2013.
online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111904742804579276480851049294.html
(Turns out the projects [real estate development] belong to Lenovo's sister company, Raycom Real Estate 融科智地房地产开发有限公司, a developer that's been active for a decade within the conglomerate of Lenovo's controlling shareholder Legend Holdings. * * * I'm sure they know what they're doing”)
Note: The second part of the title (“Stealth Realty Plays”) and of the text is about Lenovo’s investment in real estate (in China).