News: Hitachi to stop manufacturing TVs in Japan in October

Hitachi, the TV manufacturers have announced that they  will stop producing television sets and outsource all production later this year (precisely October) from Japan, as the global electronics makers continue to struggle with the the strong yen and foreign competition.

A spokesman for the company said “We can’t expect the domestic TV market to grow much, and price competition is getting more and more intense.”   Ending production is part of the company’s effort to shift from consumer electronics toward social-infrastructure operations—such as electric power, railway systems and information technology—where it sees greater potential for growth, although the company says it still plans to sell TVs made by OEM contractors outside Hitachi Group.

It seems the Korean competition and with the soaring yen causing high production costs and low returns on overseas sales are proving too much for the Japanese companies and in fact if reports are to be believed, even the biggest players from Japan are having difficulty maintaining profit margins amid global price competition. Sony and Panasonic also are restructuring their TV-set operations to stanch losses.