Sharp Sell Most LCD Televisions In Japan?
In recent news of new LCD televisions lineup launch by Sharp, they claimed they are number One LCD televisions brand in Japan. Is this true? I searched for more supportive information to counter check whether Sharp is as “sharp” as they claimed.
Hiroshi Take, one of the managers of Sharp Corp.’s latest and most advanced television factory, beams like a proud father. The gleaming white $1.4 billion Kameyama factory, 260 miles southwest of Tokyo, came online in year 2004 and is cranking out thousands of Sharp’s hot-selling large-screen flat-panel Aquos TVs per month.
Sharp got its flat-screen focus from Katsuhiko Machida, the company’s president, who for years fretted that his outfit was doomed to be a second-tier player. When he ran Sharp’s television business in the 1980s, Machida says, the firm had trouble competing because it didn’t manufacture the most important TV component, the cathode-ray tube. Forced to cobble together parts bought from competitors, Sharp was little more than an assembler, cranking out sets that were always a little too expensive and a little too poorly engineered to attract many customers. It was a dispiriting struggle, says Machida, but it taught him an ironclad belief that is now axiomatic throughout the company: “If you are in electronics and you are not strong in TVs, your business and your brand will suffer.”
