TOKYO - Japan’s consumer-electronics leaders, long associated with engineering prowess, face a radically altered global landscape. Once-defining products—Sharp’s all-transistor calculators and wall-mounted TVs, Sony’s Walkman, Panasonic’s image-stabilized camcorders and keep-warm rice cookers—are now symbols of a past era as companies pivot and rivals surge.
Japanese manufacturers can no longer rely on appliances alone. Sharp has downsized the Kameyama plant and exited production of LCD panels for televisions. Sony is prioritizing entertainment. Panasonic is reported to be weighing an exit from the TV business. A survey in 2021 even indicated that roughly half of people in their 20s did not recognize the Panasonic brand.
A major driver of the slump is the rise of Chinese makers. Haier’s drum-type washing machines, for example, skip extras like drying but cover essentials such as wrinkle-care spin cycles and sell for about 78,000 yen. Roborock’s robot vacuums combine camera- and sensor-based obstacle avoidance with mopping, threshold climbing, and dock-based self-cleaning at around 280,000 yen. Consumers, who long avoided unfamiliar brands because appliances are durable purchases, now see value as choices expand.
Analysts argue the comeback hinges on breaking free of the innovator’s dilemma—the tendency to over-refine incumbent technologies while missing disruptive shifts. Japan’s feature phones offered early mobile internet, yet the iPhone reset the market almost overnight. The Walkman defined portable music, but iPod’s compact, data-centric model displaced it globally. The pattern reflects a Galápagos-style focus on domestic optimization over category creation.
Even so, Japan retains strengths: key smartphone and semiconductor components where domestic suppliers hold leading global shares. The challenge is to leverage those advantages toward first-of-their-kind products. What matters is moving from 0 to 1. Flat-panel TVs astonished at launch; later competition on millimeters of thinness mattered less than being first to ship a truly new category. To regain global footing, manufacturers must prioritize category-making innovation that delivers immediate, obvious benefits to users—and scale it worldwide instead of perfecting it at home.
Source: TBS
