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Digital Products Key to Japan Tech Firms' 1st-Half Results

Posted on: Thursday, 30 October 2003, 06:00 CST

By Mariko Wakasugi

Tokyo, Oct. 30 (Jiji Press)--Japanese technology stalwarts' fiscal first-half earnings were largely decided by whether or not they have powerful digital consumer electronics items, such as flat- panel television sets and digital versatile disc recorders.

Of nine major Japanese electronics firms, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. , Sharp Corp. , Sanyo Electric Co. and NEC Corp. expanded their consolidated operating profits year on year in the April-September half of fiscal 2003.

Mainly boosting their earnings were liquid crystal display panel and plasma display panel TVs, DVD recorders, digital cameras and camera-equipped mobile phone handsets.

Sharp, the world's largest LCD maker, saw LCD TV sales double in the period.

Strong sales of electronic devices, chiefly semiconductors for digital audio and video equipment as well as LCD panels, also gave a lift to their earnings.

Meanwhile, Toshiba Corp. slid back into a group operating loss. Sony Corp. , Hitachi Ltd. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. suffered profit declines. Fujitsu Ltd. remained deep in the red although its loss amount shrank.

Toshiba's retreat stemmed from slumping sales of "Dynabook"- series notebook personal computers amid fierce price wars with such rivals as Hewlett-Packard Co. of the United States.

Toshiba saw a ray of hope in its semiconductor business, which enjoyed solid growth thanks to firm demand for NAND flash memories for memory cards and mobile phones.

But Hiroyasu Nishikawa, analyst of Cosmo Securities Co., cautioned that Toshiba's chip business may suffer a heavy blow from South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co.'s recent decision to beef up its NAND flash memory output.

Sony's game business faltered due to a drop in sales of its PlayStation video game console, its hitherto cash cow, pushing down its overall earnings.

Sony was thus forced to lower its group operating profit forecast to 100 billion yen for the full year to next March from 130 billion yen announced in July.

"The downward revision can be blamed almost entirely on the sluggishness of the game division," Sony's Senior Vice President and Group Chief Financial Officer Takao Yuhara said in a press briefing last week.

Hitachi's operating profit shrank sharply because of slack sales of air conditioners amid cool summer weather and the anemic performance of the hard disk drive business it acquired from International Business Machines Corp.

Air conditioner sales were also weak at Mitsubishi Electric, Matsushita Electric and Sharp.

Fujitsu's red-ink operating figure was due to a setback in software services, and slow recovery in server systems and optical- fiber data transmission systems.

For the full year, all nine firms expect to post profits on an operating and net balance.(MORE)Digital Products Key to Japan Tech Firms' 1st-Half Results

Following are the nine major Japanese electronics makers' consolidated earnings for April-September in billions of yen, with figures in parentheses showing year-on-year percentage changes for sales and actual year-before profits or losses for operating and net balances:

Company Sales Operating Profit Net Profit Hitachi 4,041 ( 3.2) 20.2 ( 61.6) 5.3 ( 5.6) Matsushita 3,639 ( 0.5) 79.6 ( 50.0) 23.1 ( 17.5) Sony 3,400 ( -3.2) 49.8 ( 102.3) 34.0 ( 101.2) Toshiba 2,608 ( -1.0) -11.9 ( 2.8) -32.1 ( - 26.4) NEC 2,283 ( 5.0) 58.0 ( 26.7) 15.4 ( 1.0) Fujitsu 2,141 ( -0.4) -17.9 ( -23.2) -58.5 (- 147.4) Mitsubishi 1,564 ( -4.6) 12.0 ( 23.2) 3.8 ( 6.7) Sanyo 1,231 ( 17.8) 45.4 ( 33.6) 7.5 ( 2.4) Sharp 1,093 ( 12.6) 58.5 ( 48.8) 27.9 ( 22.8)

Note: Loss figures are preceded by "-" marks.[EARNINGS]END

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