What happen to Japan tech companies?

[Bubble99]

In the 80s and 90s and 2000s there was Panasonic, Toshiba, NEC, and Sony making TVs, monitors, and computers and now you hardly hear about them.

What happen to Japan tech? Why where electronics where rage in the 80s and 90s and 2000s and now you hardly hear about them?

 

[maflynn]

What happen to Japan tech?

The same thing that happened to American manufactoring. Competitors offering cheaper products of similar quality.

 

[TSE]

They went to China and to a lesser extent Korea.

 

[JPack]

The answer is largely political with a some cultural and business reasons. Japanese tech got to the point where it was extremely competitive, so the U.S. took moves to halt Japanese progress.

The U.S. banned Toshiba and placed tariffs on many other Japanese electronics. Toshiba invented NAND flash memory and had a very strong fab business which obviously put other Japanese electronics companies at an advantage.

The longer term response was the U.S. forcing Japan to sign the Plaza Accords. This depreciated the USD against the Japanese Yen which effectively doubled the price of everything entering the U.S. This obviously had a huge impact on Japanese economic competitiveness as a whole. This is still being felt today when people ask why Japan’s economy has been stagnant for decades.

Then, Japanese electronics companies often designed their own proprietary standards to meet the Japanese domestic market but weren’t adopted globally. Examples included Sony Memory Stick, digital TV (1Seg), transit and payment NFC, special mobile Internet platforms.

100% Tariff Put on Some Japan Goods : Reagan Move to Halt Chip Dumping Could Double TV, Computer Prices

President Reagan on Friday imposed tariffs of 100% on medium-sized Japanese color televisions, powerful lap-top and desk computers and certain hand power tools, to retaliate for Japan's failure to allow more American products into its markets and to halt the underpriced "dumping" of Japanese…

www.latimes.com