Nissan EV charger smaller, cheaper
Wednesday, Sep. 14, 2011
Kyodo
Nissan Motor Co. will launch a smaller, cheaper and faster electric vehicle charger in Japan in November.
The charger will be nearly half the size of the older Nissan charger now on sale and can be installed more easily, the company said Monday. The new model retains the high performance of the older one, it added.
While the older charger sells for a suggested price of almost \1.5 million, the new one is likely to cost significantly less than \1 million.
It is compatible with electric cars made by not only Nissan but also by other automakers as well.
In charge: Nissan Motor Co. chief vehicle engineer Hidetoshi Kadota demonstrates how to charge an electric car during a media event unveiling a new, smaller charger in Tokyo on Monday. AP
トヨタの電気と燃料セルの将来車
Toyota concepts await show
Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2011
By HIROKO NAKATA Staff writer
Ahead of next month's Tokyo Motor Show, Toyota Motor Corp. on Tuesday unveiled two fuel-efficient concept cars, one an electric vehicle and the other a fuel-cell vehicle.
New wheels: Toyota Motor Corp.'s Aqua hybrid, which will be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in December, is shown in a handout photograph. KYODO
The concept EV, called the FT-EVIII, has better range and speed characteristics than previous models. The auto giant has said it aims to start selling electric vehicles in 2012.
The FT-EVIII has a range of 105 km on a full charge, and it has a maximum speed of 125 kph.
The earlier FT-EVII concept car unveiled at last year's motor show can run 90 km and has a maximum speed of 100 kph.
Toyota also took the wraps off the fuel-cell concept car FCV-R, based on a sedan. It is more compact than the previous FCV, which was based on a sport utility vehicle like the Toyota Kluger.
The carmaker said it plans to release fuel-cell vehicles onto the market by around 2015.
Toyota also unveiled a prototype compact hybrid that it plans to launch in late December.
The car, called the Aqua in Japan and Prius c in other countries, can travel 35 km on 1 liter of fuel.
The Tokyo Motor Show, which opens to the public on Dec. 2, will feature 15 Japanese auto brands and 25 foreign makers.
Insight: Dynamic CEOs defy Japan Inc's decline
By Linda Sieg and James Topham
TOKYO | Mon Apr 2, 2012 6:06pm EDT
TOKYO (Reuters) - When Yusaku Maezawa quit playing drums in a punk band to devote himself full-time to his business selling Tokyo street fashion on the Internet, his main goal was to have fun.
Twelve years later, Maezawa, 36, is the billionaire CEO of online fashion retailer Start Today, one of a clutch of growing firms led by a different breed of executives determined to avoid the errors of the global Japanese brands whose faltering fortunes are making Japan Inc synonymous with decline.
"I was in danger of becoming a 'salaryman musician'," Maezawa said in an interview at his company headquarters in a high-rise office building outside Tokyo, where framed T-shirts hand-sprayed by company executives with letters spelling out "NO WAR" adorn the entrance.
"On the other hand, the company was growing dynamically, I was meeting new people to work with and I heard customers were happy, so it felt like there was more dynamism and growth," added Maezawa, who named his firm for an album by punk band Gorilla Biscuits.
The company, which now has about 400 full-time employees, expects operating profits to rise by more than 46 percent to 8.56 billion yen ($104 million) in the year just ended.
Maezawa, whose firm listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's start-up section in 2007 and graduated to the first section in February, may be rare in preaching fun as a management gospel.
"I want to destroy the old concept that a company is a place where one sacrifices time for the sake of money," he said with an impish grin, confessing he now works a four-day week.
But his commitment to innovation and a laser-like focus on making consumers happy are shared traits experts agree set off Japan's emerging successes from once-proud but now-struggling firms such as Sony and Panasonic.
And it's not just those storied electronics groups that are at risk of being left behind in today's fast changing world. The stock market barometer, the Nikkei average, has dropped 74 percent from the heady highs of late-1989.
"Many people just rely on their past success, but things are moving and changing so fast, you need to self-innovate," Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of e-commerce operator and Amazon rival Rakuten Inc, told Reuters in a telephone interview as he travelled by car through Tokyo.
"Even Rakuten, if we stop, I think we are going to decline very rapidly. That's the new rule of the game," said Mikitani, whose firm, set up in 1997, now employs over 7,000 people and posted group operating profit of 71.34 billion yen last year.
Experts say more such success stories - found in sectors ranging from retail, Internet and mobile games to niche manufacturers - could help revive a Japanese economy stuck in the doldrums for decades and saddled with an ageing population.
Maezawa is a high school graduate; Mikitani studied at Harvard Business School. Several stand-out CEOs founded start-ups but others built up a family business or head an established firm.
What these executives do have in common, though, is an individualism rare in Japan's often staid business circles.
"Japanese society is changing and independent types are increasing, and every year more people are trying venture businesses," said Tatsuyuki Negoro, a professor at Waseda University's IT Strategy Institute.
"The question is whether things can change in time before Japan sinks."
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Factors behind the well-chronicled decline of famed Japanese brands are legion, including an inability to ditch loss-making divisions and focus on core businesses, an obsession with building 'better' products that consumers don't want, and risk-averse 'salaryman CEOs' hobbled by a search for consensus.
Those management mindsets have contributed to the woes of companies such as Sony, Panasonic and Sharp, set to lose a combined $17 billion in the year to end-March.
"Japan is seeking something like stability," said Tadashi Yanai, 63, listed by Forbes as Japan's richest man with family assets of $10 billion, and CEO of Asia's largest apparel retailer, Fast Retailing. "Stability is fine, but if you try to be stable without a desire to grow, there is no stability.
"I think the biggest problem is that that awareness has faded," Yanai said at his biggest store just days before it opened last month in Tokyo's glitzy Ginza district as part of a bid to rejuvenate profits for casual clothing chain Uniqlo by burnishing the brand at home and expanding abroad.
For Yanai - a second-generation retailer and author of a book titled "One Victory, Nine Failures" - and other successful CEOs, fear of failure isn't part of their management lexicon.
"Without knowing what I was going to do, I decided to jump off the cliff," said Mikitani, recalling his decision in 1995 to quit a job at the then-prestigious Industrial Bank of Japan and start his own firm - a move he says he'd never contemplated until the bank sent him to study at Harvard Business School.
Kohey Takashima, 38, whose online grocery firm Oisix Inc has yet to list publicly but who already dreams of expanding in Asia, said he has never calculated the cost of failure.
"I didn't think about the risk, because I didn't think I would fail," said Takashima, who worked for consultancy McKinsey & Co before starting his company with college friends.
"If you think you might fail, you won't take the risk," said Takashima, whose company in 2008 won the Porter Prize for innovative companies, named after Harvard Professor Michael Porter, author of the book "Can Japan Compete?"
A clear focus on satisfying consumers rather than mindlessly upgrading technological quality is another characteristic of the newer breed of thriving firms, experts and executives say.
"Companies that are struggling focus on product features, added functions, physical features. But by producing these, they don't really satisfy the consumer," said Shintaro Okubo, partner at consulting firm Bain & Co's Tokyo office.
"Those that are doing well are not bringing new features or functions, but entertaining the consumer."
Rakuten's Mikitani hopes that approach can differentiate his "online shopping mall" model from global giant Amazon, as he pushes overseas through M&A deals, though analysts say he may struggle in developed markets where Amazon has a big head start.
"People like to buy products and be proud of it, not just the product, but the process," Mikitani said in the fluent English he insists his executives must learn.
"Of course, price and convenience are also very important, but our strategy or way of thinking of our business (is that) shopping is not just about convenience and price, it's about experience and communication."
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With a boldness experts say established firms would do well to imitate, Start Today's Maezawa says he'd abandon his online fashion business rather than try to undercut rivals with lower prices and wages if he starts losing to such competition.
"I want to create new value by doing something people haven't done before," said Maezawa, whose Zozotown shopping site had nearly 1.9 million active members as of February.
"If competition heats up in terms of price and labor conditions ... I would let the imitators do it and develop a new innovation."
HURDLES AHEAD
Success when firms are younger and nimble is easier than producing similarly dynamic growth as the organization expands and ages, so many firms now winning plaudits and investor attention will have to fight to maintain a growth trajectory.
Finding a successor to current dynamic CEOs could also be a problem, experts say.
"There's a risk (that they will stall), but their management is always saying they must avoid that and doing management calisthenics to shed fat," said Shinji Higaki, a portfolio manager at Fidelity Worldwide Investment in Tokyo.
Like their stodgier corporate brethren before them, thriving Japanese firms are stepping out overseas and betting on growth from Asia in particular to offset a mature domestic market.
Takeshi Niinami, CEO of Japan's No.2 convenience store chain Lawson Inc, longs for a corporate jet to help execute what he termed "a mission to seek opportunities in Asia".
"We CEOs need to be constantly travelling abroad. For that, a private jet - not one of the big 2-3 billion yen ones but a small 200-300 million yen one - to jet around Asia would be enough," Niinami, who plans to operate 10,000 stores in China by 2020, up from 355 outlets now, told Reuters in an interview.
Mobile social gaming firm Gree Inc, which last year bought U.S.-based online games network OpenFeint Inc, aims to quintuple its global users to 1 billion in 3-5 years and is looking to Asia for longer-term growth, said CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka, dubbed Asia's youngest self-made billionaire by Forbes in 2009.
These executives know they face a tough balancing act to maintain unique appeal developed at home with adaptations to local tastes in markets where competitors may be already entrenched - Fast Retailing's Yanai, for example, has already had one taste of failure in an earlier foray abroad.
"Japanese that go overseas and do things the Japanese way are limited in what they can accomplish," said Niinami, a Harvard Business School graduate parachuted in from Mitsubishi Corp to run the chain after the trading house took a major stake in 2002.
"Japan's technology is advanced, but you need to leverage local employees who really understand the cultures of these places to tell you what is appropriate for that country."
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Individual success stories aside, experts and executives agree Japan needs more dynamic, risk-taking business chiefs.
"There are huge numbers of people working at companies who have never seen their firm grow in the years since they got their jobs," said Gree's Tanaka, who himself got a taste of start-up success when he worked at Rakuten - and whose offices occupy the same Roppongi Hills complex that was home to a once high-flying Internet entrepreneur, Takafumi Horie.
"So even if you tell them that growth and success are interesting or fantastic ... it doesn't seem real."
Aggressive self-starters also remain a minority in part because those who succeed too well risk a social backlash.
"Japanese who become truly successful are often pulled down by society for that very fact. It's the cost of jealousy," said Akira Sato, a partner in Japanese consultancy Value Create.
Gree's stellar profits may be one reason the firm has attracted criticism from media for the big bills run up by minors buying virtual accessories to improve their scores, Waseda's Negoro said. Last month, Gree announced it was capping the amount under-20s could spend.
"Japanese don't like it if someone makes too much money. You should make just enough," Negoro said. "That's the Japanese tradition."
Rakuten's Mikitani, though, thinks the chill in Japan's appetite for entrepreneurship that followed Horie's 2006 arrest and subsequent prison sentence for accounting fraud is thawing.
Horie's aggressive takeover battles and high-flying lifestyle rattled corporate Japan, and many felt his 30-month prison sentence reflected an establishment backlash.
"We are feeling that young people are being a little more ambitious and the trend is turning back again," Mikitani said.
On-line organic food grocer Oisix's Takashima says opportunities abound for the ambitious, though he adds he wants to make the world a better place, not just rake in profits.
"Japan is the world's third biggest market, is very attractive and is being ignored," Takashima said. "There isn't much competition, so I have a lot of freedom. It's a great environment. I'd like to keep that a secret.
($1 = 82.2950 Japanese yen)
(Additional reporting by Reiji Murai and Ritsuko Shimizu; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
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「problems in Japan in product innovation, supply chain management and slow management decision-making, as well as a focus on the domestic market over exports.」。携帯の次はテレビ、将来は車の製造でも日本に経済的打撃を及ぼすことが予想される。ショッキングなのは日本は官民提携で、国民の税金が大量に使われている。それにもかかわらずテレビ製造では韓国が日本を凌駕して利益を出している事実だろう。
****
Analysis: As technology shifts, Asian giants wrestle for TV control
By Tim Kelly and Clare Jim
TOKYO/TAIPEI | Tue Apr 24, 2012 5:54pm EDT
TOKYO/TAIPEI (Reuters) - LG Electronics will steal a march on its rivals by bringing forward the launch of a 55-inch flat TV using next-generation technology, raising the stakes in a cut-throat battle for the living room between Asia's top tech powerhouses.
The South Korean firm will introduce its organic light emitting display (OLED) TV in several European countries in May, well ahead of an original plan to launch in the second half, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
That would edge out cross-town rival Samsung Electronics and cement, at least for now, South Korean dominance in the television market over long-time leaders Japan, but it also highlights the fierce competition reshaping Asia's flat panel industry.
"(In the past) if you wanted a top quality TV you had to buy a Sharp, Panasonic or Sony. Those days are gone," said Steve Durose, Senior Director and Head of Asia-Pacific at FitchRatings.
The Japanese, who ruled the global TV market in the 1980s and 1990s, have been battered by their aggressive South Korean rivals, weak demand for the TVs they make and a stronger yen that erodes the value of the their exports. Sony Corp, Panasonic Corp and Sharp Corp expect to have lost a combined $21 billion in the business year just ended.
Some 200 kms across the Korea Strait, LG Electronics is expected to report a quarterly profit of $267 million later on Wednesday, even after LG Display, a flat-screen maker in which it has a near-38 percent stake, posted a $156 million operating loss for January-March. On Friday, Samsung will announce a record profit of $5.2 billion for its latest quarter alone.
The red ink bleeding across Japan's tech industry comes at a time when the TV market is heading for a technology choice - between credit-card-thin OLEDs or ultra-high definition sets - that may consign today's LCDs to the bargain shelf. Whoever can mass produce affordable OLEDs will have a headstart.
Sony, for one, will recall with concern how it lost out in a similar consumer technology battle over home videotapes in the 1980s, while Toshiba's HD DVD format was later crushed by Blu-Ray.
IF THE PRICE IS RIGHT
Sony was first to market OLED TV technology in 2007, but halted production of the $2,000 home screens three years later amid a global downturn, and switched its focus to 3D. Sony limits sales of OLED screens costing as much as $26,000 to businesses that can afford the high price tag.
In January, Samsung and LG displayed prototype 55-inch OLED screens at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Samsung has already signaled its intent on OLEDs, saying in February it will spin off its LCD panel business.
For makers of OLED displays, which boast sharper images and do not need backlighting, the obstacle to consumer acceptance is price. You can buy 10 LCD TVs for the likely price of $10,000 for a big Samsung or LG model. That means LCD is likely to remain the dominant force in the global TV market for a while.
An executive at LG Display, a flat screen maker in which LG Electronics has a near 38 percent stake, said an internal study indicated consumers would start buying OLED TVs once the price falls to 1.3 to 1.4 times that of an LCD set.
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Japan, meanwhile, has a potential rival offering - ultra high-definition sets, dubbed 4K, that boast pictures four times sharper than today's HDTV sets. Sony, Panasonic and Sharp all have this technology, but face a broadcasting infrastructure hurdle, as television stations would need to record in 4K for viewers to watch the new ultra high-definition standard.
"However, if the sets are used to view video downloaded from the Internet then higher definition could be viewed more easily," said Kazuhira Miura, an industry analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities in Tokyo, potentially giving Japan an edge in any trend for connected smart TVs.
Given that, it's too early to write off the Japanese, but they may need help to get their operations back on track.
GRAND ALLIANCE?
One option being explored is an alliance of Japan's major TV makers, brokered by the government, which would allow them to pool their R&D cash, engineering know-how and eliminate overlapping costs. Japan has already taken a step down this road, with Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi Ltd combining their small LCD operations into Japan Display, a state-sponsored company two-thirds owned by the taxpayer.
But TVs may be a different matter.
"Creating a united maker is going to be hard," said Yoshiharu Izumi, analyst at JP Morgan in Tokyo, citing different corporate cultures and traditions and entrenched feelings of rivalry after decades of competition. "An alliance just to cut costs doesn't really make sense. Of course any tie up doesn't have to be between Japanese companies, it could be Taiwanese."
Indeed, there are signs that cooperation is picking up between Japan and contract manufacturers in its former colony of Taiwan to take on South Korea, another former colony. Taiwan's manufacturers have plants and know-how at low prices as well as a complete supply chain for LCD production.
"The Japanese need the capacity, while the Taiwanese need outlets. Japan has the technology, but may not necessarily be able to implement. So it's a match," said David Hsieh, Taipei-based Greater China market vice president at specialist research firm DisplaySearch. "Because Japan's scale is smaller, that's why it has to work with Taiwan. The added scale in TV panels will match Korea."
MORE COLLABORATION
Recent media reports have linked Sony with AU Optronics in a tie-up to make TVs, while Taiwanese component maker Hon Hai Precision Industry, which belongs to the same Foxconn group as LCD panel maker Chimei Innolux, recently became the top shareholder in Sharp and invested in its Sakai plant, Japan's most advanced LCD facility.
Taiwan's LCD industry would benefit from tie-ups with Japan through increased cooperation and outsourcing. The industry lost $4.3 billion last year, and AU is expected on Thursday to report a first-quarter loss of some $430 million.
"Taiwan doesn't have the edge in many of the technologies," said H.P. Chang, head of research at Taiwan-based specialist LCD industry research company Witview. "Even if your company wants to consolidate, others may not want to. Samsung will not sit and wait for you to grow. Taiwanese and Japanese companies need to explore ways to collaborate."
While Taiwan's government has leaned on banks to help loss-making Chimei extend its loan repayments, it takes the view that any consolidation should be led by the industry itself, though it would look at how it could help.
"I don't think Taiwan's government really wants an industry consolidation because that will create many job losses," said Samson Hung, a Taipei-based analyst for UBS.
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But, without consolidation, business will be tough for Taiwanese firms as they lack international branding and their investment costs are forever rising.
"They have to consider how to allocate resources, how to share intellectual property. They have argued for a long time," said Jamie Yeh, Taipei-based analyst at Barclays. "Not just country to country, but they also have to consider cultural and language factors."
CHINA CHASING?
Also in Taiwanese makers' rear-view mirror is China's fledgling panel industry - at a fair distance today, but one that could quickly catch up. Some rising players in China include TCL Corp, BOE Technology, Tianma Microelectronics and Infovision Optoelectronics.
"I think Chinese players will keep working on their own. They don't have financial concerns," said Witview's Chang. "They will keep growing and eventually become a threat to Taiwan's capacity."
Of course, Japan's tech manufacturers could bite the bullet and seek to tie-up with the South Koreans, tapping into their lead in OLED TVs. There is a precedent: Sony had an LCD joint venture with Samsung, though exited it last year.
"Japanese firms will probably be considering OLED tie-ups with not just Taiwanese but also Samsung and LG, as the technology is more likely to become the next display for TVs and they haven't invested heavily into this technology yet," said Ji Mok-hyun, an analyst at Meritz Securities in Seoul.
For now there is an air of confidence in South Korea, looking across at a struggling Japanese industry.
"We've been No.1 in the TV market for six years and I think Japanese firms are sticking to their massive, but unprofitable, TV business simply because it's their legacy business," said a senior executive at Samsung, who asked not to be identified as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
James Jeong, chief financial officer at LG Display, told Reuters: "We're talking to TV manufacturers, including Japanese, for cooperation (in OLED supplies). There'll be plenty of opportunities for cooperation and tie-ups in the display industry ... as long as it's not your sworn enemy."
A senior LG Electronics executive, who also didn't want to be named, noted problems in Japan in product innovation, supply chain management and slow management decision-making, as well as a focus on the domestic market over exports.
"It's like a swimming contest," the executive said. "Once there's a gap, it's really difficult for the follower to narrow the gap dramatically as the one ahead continues to move ahead."
($1 = 29.5060 Taiwan dollars) ($1 = 1139.4000 Korean won)
(Additional reporting by Miyoung Kim in SEOUL and Argin Chang in TAIPEI; Writing by Jonathan Standing; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
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先を行くアメリカで起こっているネット販売ＶＳ大売り場を持つ有名小売業者の戦い
****
Are We Witnessing the Death of the Big-Box Store?
By Christopher Matthews | May 24, 2012 |
A shuttered Best Buy store in Chicago on April 16, 2012
Best Buy released its first-quarter 2012 earnings this week, and though the numbers beat Wall Street expectations, net income took a tumble — falling 25%, compared with last year. And more than just poor earnings have plagued the nation’s largest retailer of late. Six weeks ago, former CEO Brian Dunn left the company amid allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a female staffer.
Though sex scandals make for good headlines, Dunn’s departure is a sideshow compared with the real issues Best Buy faces. And another quarter of declining revenues has pundits wondering if these latest results are just another step on the road to the end of the big-box store phenomenon.
This may seem a bit counterintuitive for those of us who don’t follow the retail industry closely. After all, didn’t large big-box retailers just finish putting smaller mom-and-pops out of business with their giant selection and amazing supply chain efficiency? The answer to that question is yes, they did — but the marketplace evolves quickly these days, and the narratives that defined the 2000s will not necessarily hold in the 2010s.
So what’s behind a store like Best Buy’s headlong decline? One word: Amazon. Specialty big-box stores like Best Buy have made a killing the past 20 years by offering a huge selection of products at low prices. But there is no way the firm can compete with an Internet retailer like Amazon on those measures. Even worse for Best Buy is the phenomenon of “showrooming,” whereby shoppers check out an item in a store and then buy it through an online competitor for a lower price. This is particularly frustrating for brick-and-mortar stores because it takes their one tangible advantage to online retailers — the in-store experience — and turns it into a way for their competitors to steal market share.
So what’s Best Buy’s turnaround plan? In a call with analysts on Tuesday, interim CEO Mike Mikan acknowledged that the current marketplace is “not one we were prepared for” and said he would lay out a concrete plan in the coming months. But he did give some rough guidelines as to the direction he hopes to take the firm. He wants to beef up Best Buy’s online operation, dramatically reduce the square footage of existing stores and open newer, smaller stores that focus on one product segment, like mobile phones.
This plan is roughly in line with what pundits have been calling for in the past several months. Farhad Manjoo argued last month in Slate that Best Buy needs to radically downsize its stores and selection, focusing instead on providing expertise in what it does offer. He writes:
Maintaining a big selection costs big money and offers a perverse advantage to Best Buy’s online rivals. By keeping so many TVs on its sale floor, Best Buy is offering itself up as a showroom for Amazon: Potential customers can walk into a store, check out the stock, and go home and buy the product they like best online. Then there’s the “paradox of choice” — the idea that giving consumers lots of retail choices tends to paralyze and confuse them, and sometimes pushes them to leave your store empty-handed. Though this theory is controversial, the runaway success of Apple’s retail stores proves that a small, curated product line doesn’t necessarily hurt sales. Why wade through 30 laptops when you only want to buy one?
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But even following this Apple-like business model may not be enough to save Best Buy. It’s possible that the forces of e-commerce and advancing technology are too great to effectively combat and that specialized superstores are no longer efficient. John Backus, a venture capitalist and managing partner of New Atlantic Ventures, seems to think this is the case. He wrote in a blog post earlier this year that we are entering “the death of retail 2.0.” The first permutation of the death of retail, Backus writes, included the failure of large media retailers like Borders, Blockbuster and Tower Records. The Internet proved to be a much more efficient medium for purveying media. The second wave of retail death will include sellers of electronics and other small specialty goods. According to Backus, stores from Radio Shack to Staples will find themselves in a severely diminished position, if not completely gone, in the next decade. As for Best Buy, forces beyond Amazon are making its core product lines unprofitable. Backus writes:
“Appliances are here to stay, but are not a frequent purchase. Video games are moving into the cloud. Home theatre is stagnant … we may continue to upgrade our main television screen at home every 3-5 years, but more and more we will consume movies and television on our desktops, tablets, and phones. So sales of second and third TVs are dying quickly. In-car electronics, standalone GPS, satellite radio, seatback DVD players and HD radio will quickly disappear, replaced only by the smartphone powering a dumb screen on the dashboard.”
This integration of devices is another force that will hit electronics retailers the hardest. If one device is completing many of our tasks, electronics retailers can’t move the volume of goods needed to justify huge overhead costs like sales forces and brick-and-mortar stores.
But not all big-box retail will go the way of the dodo. Retailers that offer a broad spectrum of goods will be able to fend off e-commerce by providing staple products like groceries and other items that aren’t easily shipped. For that reason, Backus sees Walmart and Target surviving the latest wave of retail death.
So perhaps it’s early to predict the total elimination of the superstore that has come to define America’s suburban landscape. But forces in the marketplace are clearly aligning to do away with many of them. And oddly enough, the sort of stores that pundits are predicting will replace them — smaller outfits that focus on customer service and product expertise — look strangely like the mom-and-pop companies of yore, the extinction of which many bemoaned not a decade ago.
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電通のイージス買収の背後には日本国内需要の継続的縮小がある。世界不況と相まって、日本企業の危機意識がうかがえる。
*****
Japanese ad giant Dentsu enters Europe with Aegis
By Kate Holton and Paul Sandle
LONDON | Thu Jul 12, 2012 8:55am EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - Japanese ad giant Dentsu is buying marketing group Aegis for 3.2 billion pounds ($5 billion), the biggest deal in its history as it seeks to expand outside its home market with the British firm's European and digital business.
Revealing how badly Dentsu needs growth outside its shrinking home market, it will pay a 48 percent premium to secure the takeover after European groups WPP and Publicis snapped up rival agencies in recent years.
The price represents 20 times full year 2012 expected price earnings, compared with the 10-11 times at which WPP and Publicis trade, said analyst Ian Whittaker at Liberum Capital.
The deal means Japan is the second most active overseas acquirer this year with more than $20 billion worth of deals, behind the United States but surpassing all major European nations and China in outbound M&A.
Analysts described the deal as a perfect strategic fit after Aegis Chief Executive Jerry Buhlmann turned the group around to grow in Asia Pacific, the U.S., emerging markets and digital marketing in recent years.
"The quality of the offer, the strong likelihood of deal certainty, the fact the offer was cash and the fact it was a meaningful serious approach meant that we entered bilateral discussions with them," Buhlmann said of Dentsu's approach.
Aegis, which has Coca-Cola, GM and Disney on its client list, has long been seen as a potential takeover target, although it had for years been linked to the French group Havas as French financier Vincent Bollore was the largest shareholder in both.
Aegis has performed strongly since selling its Synovate market research unit last year to focus on the faster growth areas of media buying and selling and digital communications.
In 2011, the group increased the proportion of its revenues from digital to a sector-leading 35 percent.
Analysts said the deal underlined the value present in advertising companies despite a tough economic climate and could lift the whole sector.
"We see the deal as underlining that the advertising sector still represents significant value," Bernstein analyst Claudio Aspesi said.
"The premium paid by Dentsu suggests they are confident of continuing long term growth for Aegis, despite recent negative commentary on the outlook for the European ad market."
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For Dentsu, the deal enables it to find new growth outside its home market, which is eroding. Though the company dominates traditional Japanese print and broadcasting sectors, overall ad industry revenue fell 2.3 percent to 5.7 trillion yen ($72 billion) in 2011 -- the fourth annual contraction for an industry that in the past decade has shrunk by almost 6 percent.
"Dentsu and Aegis will be the market leader in the Asia-Pacific region, enjoying a strong presence across Europe and the fastest growing agency network in the US," President and CEO of Dentsu, Tadashi Ishii, said.
"In recent years, under the leadership of Jerry Buhlmann and his team, Aegis has been recognized as the most successful independent media and digital communications agency with strong performance momentum and talented, client-focused employees."
Dentsu said it had already purchased or had irrevocable undertakings in relation to around 30 percent of Aegis' stock, including shares from Bollore.
The Bollore group confirmed it had agreed to sell its 26.4 percent stake to Dentsu for 240 pence a share in a big payout for the group after it bought into Aegis in 2005.
Bollore will now have more capital to invest elsewhere, perhaps in his electric car battery project or in media-to-telecom group Vivendi where he is poised to take a 5 percent stake.
The deal comes months after Dentsu ended a nine-year alliance with Aegis' European rival Publicis. The French company bought back a 9.1 percent stake held by Dentsu in February, leaving the Japanese group with the firepower to strike another deal in Europe, analysts said at the time.
"We at Aegis are delighted at the prospect of being able to play a full part in helping Dentsu create a platform for global growth and continued digital innovation," Buhlmann said.
"By forming the first communications group with true global reach, the growth strategies of both businesses will be enhanced as we provide more scale, geography, capability and investment to support clients."
Morgan Stanley advised Dentsu on the deal, while Greenhill and J.P. Morgan Cazenove advised Aegis.
($1 = 0.6426 British pounds)
(Additional reporting by Timothy Kelly and Junko Fujita in Japan and Leila Abboud in France; Editing by Sophie Walker)
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アメリカのベンチャーキャピタル
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Multinationals Stake a Claim in Venture Capital
September 3, 2012, 8:31 pm
By EVELYN M. RUSLI
Harshul Sanghi inside American Express’s venture capital office in Facebook’s old headquarters in downtown Palo Alto, Calif.
MENLO PARK, Calif. — New York, London and Hong Kong are common addresses for blue-chip multinationals. Now Silicon Valley is, too.
From downtown San Francisco to Palo Alto, companies like American Express and Ford are opening offices and investing millions of dollars in local start-ups. This year, American Express opened a venture capital office in Facebook’s old headquarters in downtown Palo Alto. Less than three miles away, General Motors’ research lab houses full-time investment professionals, recent transplants from Detroit.
“American Express is a 162-year-old company, and this is a moment of transformation,” said Harshul Sanghi, a managing partner at American Express Ventures, the venture capital arm of the financial company. “We’re here to be a part of the fabric of innovation.”
Article ToolsFacebookTwitterGoogle+E-mailSharePrintThe companies are raising their profiles in Silicon Valley at a shaky time for the broader venture capital industry. While top players like Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partners have grown bigger, most venture capital firms are struggling with anemic returns.
The market for start-ups has also dimmed, in the wake of the sharp stock declines of Facebook, Zynga and Groupon, the once high-flying threesome that was supposed to lead the next Internet boom.
But unlike traditional venture capitalists, multinationals are less interested in profits. They are here to buy innovation — or at least get a peek at the next wave of emerging technologies.
In August, Starbucks invested $25 million in Square, the mobile payments company based in San Francisco, which will be used in the coffee chain’s stores. This year, Citi Ventures, a unit of Citigroup, invested in Plastic Jungle, an online exchange for gift cards, and Jumio, an online credit card scanner.
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, the large Spanish banking group, opened an office in San Francisco last year. The team, which has about $100 million to fund local start-ups, is looking for consumer applications that will help the bank create new businesses and better understand its customers.
“We are in one of the most regulated and risk-averse industries in the world, so innovation doesn’t come naturally to us,” said Jay Reinemann, the head of the BBVA office. “We want to avoid the video-rental model. We want to evolve alongside our consumers.”
The companies are hoping to tap into the entrepreneurial mind-set. Multinationals, with their huge payrolls and sprawling operations, are not as nimble as the younger upstarts. While they are rich in resources, big companies tend to be more gun-shy and usually require more time to bring a product to market.
“Companies cannot innovate as fast as start-ups; increasingly they realize they have to look outside,” said Gerald Brady, a managing director at Silicon Valley Bank, who previously led the early-stage venture arm of Siemens. “We think it’s happening a lot more than people recognize or acknowledge.”
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Of the 750 corporate venture units, roughly 200 were established in the last two years, according to Global Corporate Venturing, a publication that tracks the market. In the last year, corporations participated in more than $20 billion of start-up investments.
Big business has played the role of venture capitalist before, with limited success. During the waning days of the dot-com boom, financial, media and telecommunications companies sank billions of dollars into start-ups.
The collapse was devastating. Although some managed to make money, far more burned through their cash. In 2002, Accenture, the consulting firm, scrapped its venture capital unit after taking more than $200 million in write-downs. The previous year, Wells Fargo reported $1.6 billion in losses on its venture capital investments. Dell, the computer maker, closed its venture arm in 2004 and sold its portfolio to an investment firm. (It resurrected the unit last year).
Companies say they are taking a different approach this time. Rather than making big bets across the Internet sector, investments are smaller and more selective.
“We invest with the idea that we’re a potential customer for a company,” Jon Lauckner, G.M.’s chief technology officer said. “We’re not looking to make several $5 million investments and make $10 million on each. That would be nice, but it’s not important.”
As they try to find the right start-ups, some are forging tight bonds with local firms. BBVA, for example, is an investor in 500 Startups, a venture firm that specializes in early-stage start-ups and is run by Dave McClure, a former PayPal executive.
Unilever and PepsiCo are limited partners in Physic Ventures, a venture capital firm designed to help corporate investors build commercial partnerships with portfolio companies. Both Unilever and PepsiCo have installed full-time employees in Physic’s downtown San Francisco offices.
American Express has stacked its investment team with technology veterans. Mr. Sanghi, the head of the office, has spent roughly three decades in Silicon Valley and formerly led Motorola Mobility’s venture arm. Through its network of relationships, the office has met with roughly 300 start-ups in the last six months.
The connections have started to pay off. Vinod Khosla, the head of Khosla Ventures and a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, introduced the American Express team to the executives at Ness Computing, a mobile start-up. In August, American Express partnered with Singtel, the Singapore wireless company, to invest $15 million in Ness.
Mr. Sanghi says Ness is a logical investment and a potential partner. The start-up’s application connects users to local businesses through customized search results.
“It’s trying to bring consumers and merchants together in meaningful ways,” he said. “And we’re always trying to find new ways to build value for our merchant and consumer network.”
For start-ups, a big corporate benefactor can bring resources and an established platform to promote and distribute products. Envia Systems, an electric car battery maker, picked General Motors to lead its last financing round because it wanted to have a close relationship with a major automaker, its “absolute end customer,” said Atul Kapadia, Envia’s chief executive.
Although the company received higher offers from other potential corporate investors, Envia wanted G.M.’s advice on how to build the battery so that one day it could be a standard in the company’s electric cars. After the investment, G.M. offered the start-up access to its experts and facilities in Detroit, which Envia is using.
“You want to listen to your end customer because they will help you figure out what specifications you need to get into the final product,” said Mr. Kapadia.
A marriage with corporate investors can be complicated. Besides G.M., Asahi Kasei and Asahi Glass, the Japanese auto-part makers, are also investors in Envia. They both build rival battery products for Japanese car companies.
Mr. Kapadia, who prizes their insights into Japan’s market, says his company is careful about what intellectual property information it shares with its investors. At board meetings, confidential data about Envia’s customers is discussed only at the end, so that conflicted corporate investors can easily excuse themselves.
“In our marriage, there has not been a single ethics concern, because all the expectations were hashed out in the beginning,” Mr. Kapadia said. “But I can see how this could be a land mine.”
For the big corporations, start-up investing is fraught with the same risk as traditional venture investing. Their bets might be modest, but blowups can be embarrassing and can rankle shareholders, who may see venture investing as a distraction from the core business.
OnLive, an online gaming service, offers a recent reminder.
The company was once a darling of corporate investors, with financing from the likes of Time Warner, AutoDesk, HTC and AT&T. At one point, it was valued north of $1 billion.
Despite its early promise, the start-up crashed in August, taking many in Silicon Valley by surprise. The company laid off its employees, announced a reorganization and in the process slashed the value of the shares to zero.
“It can be painful when a deal goes sour,” James Mawson, the founder of Global Corporate Venturing, said.
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価格競争で中国産自動車が将来の自動車産業の勢力図を塗り替えるか？
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Special Report: China's car makers cut corners to success
Mon Sep 17, 2012 5:50pm EDT
By Norihiko Shirouzu
BEIJING (Reuters) - China keeps getting better at making cars. One reason: It's getting better at cutting corners.
Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co, one of China's biggest car makers, conducted 20 to 25 crash tests when it developed its popular Panda model, engineers involved in developing the car told Reuters. Global car makers typically conduct 125 to 150 crash tests for each new model. By relying more on computer simulations, Geely saved at least 200 million yuan ($31.57 million) and two years in development time on the Panda, the engineers said.
Paring back on crash tests, skimping on frills, simplifying designs, using cheaper materials and, in a departure for the industry, outsourcing most of their design and engineering are having a profound effect on the cost bases of China's dozens of car makers. Some are now able to sell cheap and cheerful small cars for about 40,000 yuan ($6,350) - less than half the price of a plain vanilla Toyota.
Ten years ago, no discerning Chinese consumer would have bought China-designed cars. Not only were such vehicles accused of being illegal counterfeits of foreign models, but their quality and safety were also mistrusted.
Now, despite their homely looks, some indigenous models are striking a balance between no-frills affordability and acceptable quality. In China, it is the age of the good-enough car - and that has potentially significant implications for the world auto industry.
Models such as the Panda and the Great Wall Haval H3 are becoming popular not only in China but increasingly so in emerging markets, from Indonesia to Egypt and Ukraine. They are driving China's auto exports to record levels, even as growth in China's auto market slows down.
GETTING TRACTION ABROAD
Exports of Chinese-produced vehicles are forecast by China's auto association to hit one million vehicles this year from 849,500 vehicles last year. Some automotive analysts are predicting a 50 percent increase to 1.25 million vehicles.
Some executives at big foreign manufacturers say China's new model of creating good-enough cars poses a serious challenge to the way the international industry operates.
"This is a warning shot to the established engineers who have told their management time and time and again that this is the minimum cost they can achieve with their existing design and production methodology," says Shiro Nakamura, a top Nissan Motor Co. executive and the company's chief designer. "Now the Chinese are saying they can cut another 30, 40 percent of the cost."
It normally takes four to five years for established players like General Motors Co and Toyota Motor Corp to come up with a new car from the ground up. Chinese manufacturers can now do so in just two and half years by deploying an abbreviated design process.
"Perhaps the Chinese achieve their low cost by sacrificing quality standards," says Nakamura. "But in many ways their way also points to ‘over quality' or ‘waste' we have built into our conventional design process over the years."
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The Chinese approach is a product of the extraordinarily fast rise of its auto industry. As the country opened up to the West, car makers were faced with relatively poor customers at home and sophisticated products made abroad. Global automakers could sell their pricey cars to rich Chinese, but local Chinese automakers had to come up with cheap cars for the masses.
Rapid growth in the economy spurred the creation of more than 100 registered automakers across China by the early 2000s - but they lacked expertise. Their solution in coming up with affordable cars was simple: copy the designs of foreign makers.
"Around 2000, China began embracing an approach it described as ‘reverse-engineering.' It was essentially a fancy word for copying," says Dai Ming, a senior engineer at CH-Auto Technology Corp, an independent design and engineering company based in Beijing. "The problem with those copied cars was that the Chinese were able to emulate the shape of a foreign car, but not its soul."
Chinese car makers tended to sift through a foreign vehicle to identify expensive, non-critical features and functions to skimp on or eliminate, such as a door that closes with a proper "thump," as well as power windows and passenger-airbags. The result was often dubious quality and durability. After a few years of use, bumpers and door handles would start falling off.
Dai says of the typical cheap knock-off model: "It didn't drive well like the foreign car, either, and in some cases it was a safety hazard on the road."
OUTSOURCING DESIGN
A clutch of design firms is driving the advances in affordability and quality in the industry, including CH-Auto, where Dai works; IAT Automobile Technology Co. of Beijing; and TJ Innova Engineering & Technology Co. of Shanghai.
China's indigenous automakers are so new many have not had time to groom their own engineers, and their best engineers are usually occupied more with manufacturing than design. Companies thus often outsource product design and development to outside engineering houses filled with Chinese engineers trained overseas.
Automotive analysts say these houses are responsible for helping engineer seven to eight out of every 10 cars China's indigenous car makers sell here. By using the same few design and engineering firms, Chinese car makers have effectively created a shared pool of home-grown automotive technology.
CH-Auto, for instance, has helped design an array of cars over the past decade, each time gaining fresh expertise, which it deploys for its next project - in most cases for a different company. CH-Auto was established in 2003 by a small group of jobless Chinese engineers who had trained with Beijing Jeep, a now-defunct joint venture set up initially by Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. and American Motors Corp.
CH-Auto and its rivals say they have moved beyond aping foreign designs. Instead of copying the shape of a component or an entire foreign car, they try to match its performance as well - often successfully - even as they improvise and simplify the original design to cut costs. The aim is to make cars affordable to China's emerging middle class, people who are earning 50,000 to 60,000 yuan a year ($7,900-$9,500).
"It's not copying. It's not that simple anymore," said Wang Kejian, president of CH-Auto, a former Beijing Jeep engineer who was trained for a time in Detroit by Chrysler. "Since Chinese car makers have no accumulated vehicle design technology or know-how, we have to develop our own by studying foreign cars and use local parts suppliers to approximate the components and the cars."
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Geely Automobile, which owns Swedish carmaker Volvo, turned to CH-Auto around 2005 for help on a project that led to the Panda, now one of China's most popular small cars. CH-Auto was responsible for the exterior styling and engineering the underpinnings. The rest was handled by Geely, according to the two companies.
CH-Auto and Geely made a clear departure from copying with the Panda. To be sure, they still selected a car to emulate or bench-mark - in this case, the Aygo, a "city car" that Toyota produces in Czech Republic and has been selling in Europe since 2005.
But instead of simply producing a fake Aygo, engineers at CH-Auto first studied and tested the Aygo and its components - often with the help of three-dimensional digital scanners - to collect data on their design and performance. Then they tried to manufacture components by adapting parts made in China to match desired functions and performance. If suitable local parts weren't available, they worked with suppliers to create new ones by simplifying the scanned Aygo designs.
The purpose was "not to copy but approximate the Aygo," Dai said.
PANDA'S UNDERPINNINGS
One example is the Panda's chassis. The under-body carriage, which the suspension and wheels are attached to, is key to how a vehicle handles corners on the road.
The Aygo, which starts at 6,462 pounds (about $10,000) in Britain, has a relatively sophisticated under-body structure formed in a single piece by using a process called "hydroforming," in which pressurized water is used to shape metal. For the Chinese this was a problem.
CH-Auto and its chassis suppliers have no proven know-how in hydroforming. And the light-weight steel that Toyota uses for the Aygo's under-body carriage was too pricey for Geely to use in a car to be sold in China.
Geely and CH-Auto's solution was to use cheap "everyday" steel commonly available in China, Dai said. Geely and CH-Auto divided the Panda's chassis frame into two pieces - upper and lower units - to simplify their structure so they could be easily stamped rather than using the more expensive hydroforming method. Then Geely welded those two pieces to create a chassis frame for the car.
"The problem was our solution compromised the Panda's NVH," Dai says, using the acronym for noise, vibration and harshness, the key attributes of drive feel.
Dai's engineers tweaked the Panda's suspension, adjusting the so-called rubber bushes, or isolators, to make them softer to better absorb shocks and vibrations.
Despite using cheaper materials and processes, Geely and CH-Auto were able to largely match the performance of the Aygo's platform in terms of the vehicle handling and NVH, which Dai says was confirmed by a third-party testing company. More important, by tweaking the design and using cheaper materials and manufacturing processes, Geely and CH-Auto were able to produce a platform for the Panda with "roughly half" the Aygo's cost, according to Dai.
ELIMINATING "MAJOR RISKS"
Despite the advances in design, safety standards in Chinese-made cars still lag those of U.S. and European manufacturers, in part because its government doesn't impose as stringent a body of safety requirements.
What's more, Chinese car makers ignore what they consider minor, non-critical risks, such as using far fewer crash tests with dummies.
"If the client only gives me two-and-a-half years to design a car, then I can only eliminate major risks. And the smaller risks, well, there's nothing we can do," says CH-Auto's president Wang.
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China does have vehicle safety standards, and any automaker launching a new car needs to meet them. But there is no required number of crash tests.
Geely and CH-Auto do not want to do as much crash-testing as global automakers because creating prototype cars costs up to 2 million yuan a car ($316,000), CH-Auto's Wang said.
A Geely spokesman, Victor Yang, would not say how many crash tests Geely conducted on the Panda. But Yang noted that the Hangzhou-based automaker conducted "more than what's typically performed in China." For cars being developed today, it routinely conducts more than 70 crash tests, Yang says.
By contrast, an established global player such as Toyota routinely tests a new car by crashing it a "minimum 120 to 150 times," according to a Toyota chief engineer who spoke on condition of anonymity. If the car is sold in many different markets around the world, Toyota crashes even more cars, he said.
THE ROAD AHEAD
Nevertheless, the Panda is a watershed product for both Geely and CH-Auto. The car's stylized exterior - featuring a Panda-eyed grill and tail lamps in the shape of paws - was considered cute and timely when launched in 2008 to coincide with the Beijing Olympics.
The exterior contrasted with the car's highly utilitarian interior, including exposed screws and a plasticky dashboard. The 1.3-liter, 86-horsepower motor pulls the Panda from a standstill to 100 kilometers an hour in an unthrilling 13.1 seconds. Nor is the Panda, like other no-frills Chinese cars, ready to meet the stringent safety regulations of Europe and America.
But there is one very eye-catching thing about the car: its price. A new Panda starts around 40,000 yuan ($6,400) in China and about 5,000 euros ($7,400) abroad.
After the Panda, CH-Auto's business began booming. It developed or helped develop a slew of cars and sport-utility vehicles for Changfeng, an automaker affiliated with Japan's Mitsubishi Motors. The Changfeng projects then led to deals with Jiangling Motors Co. and Chongqing Changan Automobile Co., as well as Beijing Auto.
One of CH-Auto's upcoming models is a Beijing Auto vehicle based on technology the company purchased from the now defunct Saab of Sweden.
CH-Auto also has a major contract from Dongfeng Motor Co. — the 50-50 joint venture between Nissan and Dongfeng Motor Group Co. The team will develop a subcompact car based on the Nissan March (known as the Micra in Europe) to buttress a new "indigenous" brand called Venucia launched in China earlier this year.
The advent of the good-enough car is emboldening Chinese automakers to build up their own product development capabilities to rely less on CH-Auto and other independent engineering houses.
Geely, one of China's top indigenous car makers, is expected to sell about 370,000 cars in China and 90,000 abroad this year. By 2016 the company forecasts its export volume will hit as high as 300,000 or possibly 400,000.
"My vision," said Geely Chairman Li Shufu, "is to sell outside China the same number of cars we sell within China."
(Additional reporting by Hui Li and Jane Lee; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Richard Woods)
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アメリカとサウスコリアの時代？中国も黙っていない。
革新性とスピードが以前と比べものにならないほど要求される現代企業。
その変化が、かつての日本の企業文化を支えた教育システムと官僚主義を脅かす。
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The Sad State of Japan’s Consumer Electronics Giants
By Harry McCracken | October 1, 2012 | TIME MAG
Sony TVs and other products in a British store window in 1972.=写真
The Washington Post‘s Chico Harlan has a sobering story on the dicey financial condition of big Japanese electronics companies such as Sony, Panasonic and Sharp. Once they were the gold standard in gadgets; now they’re struggling to catch up with companies located elsewhere — especially the U.S.’s Apple and South Korea’s Samsung, both of which have helped create the smartphone boom which has largely left Japan’s giants behind.
If you’d told me a couple of decades ago that Sony wouldn’t be able to command a never-ending stiff price premium for an array of products based on its unique combination of technological prowess and general status symbolism, it would have been startling. Same thing for the notion of Samsung becoming known as a reliable maker of quality products rather than as a cut-rate also ran.
The biggest challenge these companies face is that nobody is standing still: By the time they catch up with Apple and Samsung, the world may have moved on to something new. And once you’re no longer a leader, it’s hard to bounce back to the top. Just ask Zenith, RCA or any of the once-mighty U.S. consumer-electronics brands which Japan Inc. displaced a few decades ago.
ソニー岐阜工場閉鎖、2000人解雇へ
Sony to close Gifu factory, cut workforce by 2,000
Saturday, Oct. 20, 2012 AP
Sony Corp. says it plans to close a factory in Gifu Prefecture, tweaking its restructuring plan by cutting 2,000 jobs from its workforce in moves expected to save it $385 million.
The company's Minokamo factory employs 840 people making lenses for digital cameras, lens blocks and mobile phones. Sony said Friday those operations would be transferred to other factories.
That closure plus an early retirement program involving Sony's headquarters and other facilities will cut its workforce by 2,000. About half of the reductions will be in nonmanufacturing support jobs.
Its profitability battered by the March 2011 disasters and other factors, Sony reported the worst loss in its 66-year corporate history for the business year that ended in March, with red ink hitting \457 billion ($5.7 billion).
日印混成のチームメンバーと現地コンサルタントの手作りカレーの昼食をとっていたある時、私はインドの大手プロフェッショナル・ファーム、Kochhar Business Servicesのマネージングコンサルタントで、私の相方であるManish Vig氏からからこんな指摘を受けた。「日本企業の製品・サービスは高品質・高性能なのに、なぜ企業経営はこんなにも非効率なのか？」
