Gerhard Fasol.

Category: Electronics industry

  • Briefing 30 Swedish Controllers / CFO’s of Investor AB’s portfolio companies on Japan’s telecom markets

    by Gerhard Fasol

    April 24, 2006 was my Swedish Day: for breakfast I was invited to IKEA’s opening party for their new store in Funabashi (I met even with the global Chairman of IKEA – that he attended the opening in Funabashi shows how seriously IKEA is taken the market entry to Japan) – we had done some IT work for IKEA.

    Lunch and afternoon I spent with about 30 Swedish CFO’s / controllers of some of the largest Swedish corporations, who had come to Japan on a study tour. These CFO’s/Controllers were all working at companies in Investor AB’s portfolio.

    The Swedish controllers had asked for a briefing on Japan’s telecom industry. Some of their companies are considering to start, re-start, or grow faster in Japan, so there were many detailed questions about business in Japan, what can go wrong, personell issues, experience of other multinationals, and of course a lot of questions about IKEA and Vodafone.

    My presentation was similar to the presentation I had given on March 23, 2006 to the Technology Attaches of the Embassies of the 25 European Union countries, which lead the European Union to award our company a project contract about EU vs Japan benchmarking issues in telecoms and key technology areas.

    Japan telecommunications industry (66th edition) – Market analysis & tutorial

    Copyright 1997-2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved

  • SANYO – NOKIA CDMA2000 JV (Interview for CNBC)

    SANYO – NOKIA CDMA2000 JV (Interview for CNBC)

    Was interviewed today about the announced JV between SANYO and Nokia for CDMA2000 phone handsets (I added some corrections here):

    [Q1] How will SANYO benefit from this, since they are the ones who have the technology, what do they hope to gain from working with Nokia? Or is this merely a way to reduce costs for the company, since it’s struggling to remain profitable?

    It is clear to me that NOKIA will benefit, since NOKIA needs 3G know-how from Japan because all markets where NOKIA is dominating are behind compared to Japan in 3G development, and also NOKIA needs a lot of other advanced technology from SANYO.

    Of course who benefits depends both on the contract conditions and the relative strengths of the parties.

    It’s clear that financially NOKIA is the much stronger of the two. NOKIA is financially very strong, while SANYO is in a very weak position, so it’s a very clever move for NOKIA.

    [Q2] Is it already too late for Nokia to make such a move in the CDMA 2000 market, with strong players like Samsung, LG and Motorola already entrenched in the market?

    I don’t think it’s too late – both Motorola and NOKIA demonstrated rebounds recently with new design initiatives such as Motorola’s RAZR and NOKIA did a successsful turn-round by introducing clam-shell phones a trend which NOKIA had missed by not being linked sufficiently into Japan before.

    To succeed you need to make spectactular phones which match consumer needs, and you need the financial and manufacturing power as well as the brand. The combination of SANYO‘s technology with NOKIA’s financial strength and brand, as well as NOKIA’s efficient supply chain are a good basis.

    [Q3] When would you expect to see the benefits of such a move to emerge?

    I think one should not underestimate the cultural risks. NOKIA and SANYO have extremely different corporate cultures, and we have seen many cases where corporate cultures lead to great difficulties.

    I think the key will be to manage the difference in corporate cultures of two very proud companies. Locating the JV in the USA might help.

    SONY-Ericsson has demonstrated that such a JV can be successful. In the case of SONY-Ericsson it has taken several years for the JV to succeed. If one takes SONY-Ericsson as a measure, then it might take a couple of years (3-4 years) for this JV to succeed. If it’s faster than that it will be a positive surprise.

    Copyright (c) 2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved

  • About SANYO (CNBC and Wallstreet Journal)

    About SANYO (CNBC and Wallstreet Journal)

    Wednesday Nov 16, 2005, I was interviewed live on CBNC’s Asia Market Wrap with Christine Tan about SANYO’s plans to sell it’s financial division. Some of my friends asked me what I sad in this program – so here is my transcript from memory.

    Here is roughly what I said:

    Fundamentally I am very hopeful for SANYO. SANYO has some fantastic technologies and makes many fantastic electronics products. For example, SANYO makes some of the most fantastic mobile phones here in Japan for KDDI, and I heard just today that SANYO phones came top in customer satisfaction in the USA. Mr Kawahara at Kenwood and Mr Ghosn at Nissan and Ripplewood at Shinsei Bank have shown that it is possible to turn round Japanese companies in a very short time. What NISSAN, Ripplewood and Shinsei did, was to concentrate on their essential core business, on their strengths and sell or spin out all non-essential businesses. Nissan used to be in Aerospace and real estate business and lots of other areas which have nothing to do with cars. In the same way, I see much hope for SANYO, if SANYO focusses totally on core strengths and technologies.

    On the other hand, we have a corporation here with about US$ 20 billion in sales making US$ 1 billion loss last year and US$ 2 billion loss this year. So we clearly have an unstable situation. SANYO must take drastic action to sell non-essential assets and it’s in this light that SANYO has plans to sell the financial business, which is essentially a general banking operation which is not at all SANYO’s core business and strength.

    Christine Tan: “So which business areas do you think SANYO should sell”

    GF: I am of course in no position to tell SANYO management what to do, however their steps to sell non-core assets is certainly a good start. Looking at Kenwood, Nissan and Shinsei Bank and many others I can see many examples where excellent management has turned around Japanese companies in a very short time. I am confident that with the right management this can also be done at SANYO.

    See also: article in Wallstreet Journal about SANYO

    For general review see presentation at Stanford University

    Copyright (c) 2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved

  • Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, Economist

    Eurotechnology Japan KK in the press:

    Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·

  • PENCK (KDDI-AU Designer Series)

    PENCK (KDDI-AU Designer Series)

    Today, February 18, KDDI-AU introduced PENCK – the latest model in the Designer Series, designed by Makoto Saito Design Office Inc.:

    Designer: Makoto Saito Design Office Inc.
    Data rate = 2.4 Mbps
    Music = Chaku-Uta-Full, stereo speakers
    Camera = 1.24 Megapixel, incl QR barcode reader
    GPS = incl. Naviwalk navigation
    and more…

    When I was asked to brief the President of Germany, Horst Koehler, on Japan’s technology sector, KDDI kindly loaned me PENCK-phones, which I used in one of the demonstrations for President Koehler of Japan’s mobile phone industry.

    KDDI-AU design series: PENCK
    KDDI-AU design series: PENCK
    KDDI-AU design series: PENCK
    KDDI-AU design series: PENCK

    Copyright (c) 1997-2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved

  • Cisco-VP: "In the future Internet business models will come from Japan"

    In today’s Wallstreet Journal (Dec 7, 2004), Mike Volpi, Senior VP of CISCO’s routing technology group, is quoted as saying:

    “In the past the internet business models, technologies and applications were all coming from the US, but today, through broadband, Japan is about to become the number one country in the area of Internet. In the future, I believe Internet business models will come from Japan.”

    More about broadband and internet in Japan in our report: “Japan’s Telecommunication Industry” (pdf-file)

    For the full article, see: “Fujitsu, Cisco plan to team up on routers” (Wallstreet Journal, Dec 7, 2004, subscription required)

    CISCO announced to open an R&D Center in Japan in the first half of 2005: “Cisco Invests US $12 Million in Japanese R&D Center”.

    Read an interview with Mike Volpi here: “Mike Volpi on Why Cisco is Investing in a New R&D Center in Tokyo, Japan”.

  • KDDI announces Talby mobile phone designed by Marc Newson

    KDDI announces Talby mobile phone designed by Marc Newson

    KDDI – au Design Series mobile phones (today: iida brand)

    Marc Newson designed Talby phone and user interface for KDDI / au

    On 13 October 2004, KDDI/AU announced “talby”, the third phone in their “AU design series”. Volume sales start in December 2004. We expect that “talby” will be similarly successful as “infobar” one year ago.

    “talby” is a fully featured 3G phone with camera (640×480 pixel), QVGA display, EZappli/BREW, Chaku-uta, email, EZweb, PIM, GPS/EZnaviwalk,…

    Marc Newson for KDDI-AU design series: talby by Marc Newson
    KDDI-AU design series: talby by Marc Newson
    Japan telecommunications industry (66th edition) – Market analysis & tutorial

    Copyright 1997-2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved

  • SonyEricsson design team presentation & discussion

    The SonyEricsson mobile phone design team gave a very impressive presentation of their work at the Swedish Embassy yesterday.

    Here is Art Director Mr Kawagoi, who created the famous SonyEricsson logo, explaining the messages contained in his creation:

    SONY-Ericsson Design Director explaining his thoughts behind creating the SONY-Ericsson logo
    SONY-Ericsson Design Director explaining his thoughts behind creating the SONY-Ericsson logo

    Here Swedish Managers of the SonyEricsson Creative Design Center from Lund/Sweden:

    SONY-Ericsson presentation at the Embassy of Sweden in Tokyo
    SONY-Ericsson presentation at the Embassy of Sweden in Tokyo

    My conclusion: expect a lot more great designs out of SonyEricsson. Also, there is every indication it’s a very successful Japan-Swedish cooperation.

    [images in this post are taken with a DoCoMo/Sharp SH900i 3G/FOMA camera-phone in 2Megapixel setting, and sent through the air via DoCoMo’s FOMA network. Images are reproduced here in much less than the original 1224 x 1632 pixel size, which would not fit on most PC screens.]

    Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·

  • Briefing about Japan’s high-technology business world for Mme Nicole Fontaine

    Briefing about Japan’s high-technology business sector for Mme Nicole Fontaine, Vice-Minister for Industry of France

    Tokyo, Friday, September 20, 2002, at the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Japan.

    Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·

  • Bio-Nanotechnology in Japan – Impact on Foreign Corporations

    Presentation at the EU-Japan Center Tokyo and at Stanford University on April 11, 2002 in the SPRING 2002 Seminar/Public Lecture Series – Topics in International Advanced Technology of the US-Asia Technology Management Center.

    Copyright 1997-2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved