2001: Sumitomo Chemical and CDT Ltd (fully owned subsidiary of CDT Inc) enter into a cooperation agreement including technology licensing
May 2002: Sumitomo Chemical makes an equity investment in CDT Ltd
November 2005: Sumitomo Chemical established joint-venture SUMATION Co Ltd together with CDT Ltd for the development, manufacture and sales of P-OLED materials
2007: Sumitomo Chemical acquires CDT
Cambridge Display Technology (CDT)
Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) is based largely on Professor Sir Richard Friend’s and his team’s inventions and developments of polymer light emitting diodes (P-OLEDs).
CDT before acquisition was established in 1999, traded on NASDAQ (OLED), and sales in 2009 were US$ 8 million, and employed 130 people.
CDT holds many patents and intellectual property in the field of P-OLEDs.
Today was the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome which was at the beginning of the European Union.
The Treaty of Rome (Wikipedia) (“Treaty establishing the European Economic Community”) was signed on 25 March 1957 by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany and came into force on 1 January 1958.
Tokyo Tower was illuminated in green color on St Patrick’s Day – (when I took these photographs a Japanese policeman guarding the Russian Embassy nearby asked me if Tokyo Tower from now on will always be green – so I explained St. Patrick’s Day to the Japanese policeman):
Tokyo Tower on St. Patrick’s Day
Tokyo Tower on St. Patrick’s Day
Tokyo Tower on St. Patrick’s Day
Tokyo Tower on St. Patrick’s Day
Tokyo Tower on St. Patrick’s Day
I took these photographs standing close to the perimeter of the Russian Embassy in Tokyo, which is heavily guarded by Japanese police. When I took the photographs of the green Tokyo Tower, a police officer standing guard asked me, if Tokyo Tower from now on will always be green. I told him that its only today for St. Patrick’s Day. The Japanese police officer did not know about St. Patrick’s Day, so I explained St. Patrick’s Day to him….
In his presentation, Dr. Fasol will explain the essentials of Japan’s mobile phone market, why and how it is so different to Europe’s. He will also talk about some of the reasons why it is so difficult for European companies to succeed and uncover opportunities and the keys to success for European companies in this important market.
The EU-Japan Center for Industrial Cooperation held a 5-day intensive course in Japan for executives from EU firms between Monday 19th February – Friday 23rd February, 2007 on foreign direct investment in Japan.
On Monday 19th February Gerhard Fasol gave a talk “Trends in high technology in Japan”, covering the following points:
QR codes were developed in the 1990s to manage car parts – today they are by far the best way to link mobile phones to almost anything. In many applications QR codes are cheaper, easier, more flexible and more secure than RFID and NFC.
The European Central Bank (based in Frankfurt) manages the EURO, is one of the world’s most important central banks, and uses QR-codes to link traditional PC-webpages to mobile pages.
Eurotechnology’s CEO was invited to attend Ericsson’s Strategy & Technology Summit in Tokyo on November 15, 2006.
Ericsson’s CEO, Carl-Henric Svanberg, Ericsson CSO – Chief of Strategy, Japan-CEO Rory Buckley and other Ericsson top management presented Ericsson’s strategy and vision. About 100 investors and investment bank analysts were invited to attend.
I was given the opportunity to share the lunch table with CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg and had a fascinating discussion (some of his comments flowed into our company’s project report to the European Union on benchmarking Japan’s vs EU’s fixed and mobile telecommunications and broadband sectors).
With some of the largest and most advanced mobile investments, Japan’s mobile market is one of the most important markets globally for Ericsson. Recently Ericsson won major contracts from SoftBank and eMobile.
Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg speaking at the Ericsson Technology Summit in Tokyo
Nidec agreed with Valeo SA to acquire Valeo’s Motors & Actuators (VMA) business for approximately €142 million. The acquisition was agreed on November 14, 2006, and the transaction was completed on December 27, 2006.
Reasons for the acquisition
Nidec acquires sales and business channels into the automotive industry, where track record is required
Talent acquisition of highly qualified in-car motors engineers
Contribute to Nidec’s globalization: VMA operators in Europe, North-America and China.
Valeo’s Motors & Actuators (VMA) business
Business: manufacturing electric motors for automobiles. Motors for airflow systems, body closure systems, seat positioning systems, brake systems.
Employees: approx. 1700
Net sales: €253 million (FY ending December 31, 2005)
Resulting Nidec subsidiaries after completion of acquisition
Holding and administration company: Nidec Motors & Actuators in France
NIDEC MOTORS & ACTUATORS (GERMANY)
NIDEC MOTORS & ACTUATORS (POLAND)
NIDEC MOTORS & ACTUATORS (SPAIN)
NIDEC MOTORS & ACTUATORS (USA)
NIDEC MOTORS & ACTUATORS (MEXICO)
Nidec “everything that spins and moves”
Nidec was founded by Chairman Shigenobu Nagamori in 1973 in Kyoto, and focuses on “everything that spins and moves”.
Learn about Nidec and Japan’s electronics industries
October 27, 2006 the Finland-Japan Ubiquitous Society Conference was held in Tokyo.
Tero Ojanpera, Exec VP and CTO of NOKIA, gave an overview of NOKIA’s vision of communications, other speakers and panelists included Juho Lipsanen, Finland CEO of TeliaSonera, KDDI Chairman Murakami.
The day before I briefed and had a long discussion with the top management team of TeliaSonera-Finland.
Nokia CTO Tero Ojanpera talking at the Finland Japan Ubiquitous Society Conference
Panel discussion with TeliaSonera CEO Juho Lipsanen and KDDI-Chairman Murakami.
The day before the Finland-Japan Ubiquitous Society Conference in Tokyo, I briefed the top-management (CEO, CTO and other top managers) of TeliaSonera, on October 26, 2006.
The next day, October 27, 2006, the Finland-Japan Ubiquitous Society Conference was held. Tero Ojanpera, Exec VP and CTO of NOKIA, gave an overview of NOKIA’s vision of communications, other speakers and panelists included Juho Lipsanen, Finland CEO of TeliaSonera, KDDI Chairman Murakami.
Nokia CTO Tero Ojanpera talking at the Finland Japan Ubiquitous Society Conference
Panel discussion with TeliaSonera CEO Juho Lipsanen and KDDI-Chairman Murakami.
Following Vodafone’s decision to end business in Japan and the announcement of the sale of Vodafone-Japan to SoftBank, this author has been asked to brief the Technology Attaches of the 25 EU Embassies in Tokyo on Japan’s mobile phone and telecom sector.
The EU Technology Attaches were particularly interested in the impact on Europe by the termination of by far the biggest ever European investment in Japan. Clearly it is also important to determine, what other European companies can learn from Vodafone’s experience.
“SoftBank” replaces “Vodafone” brand in Japan following Vodafone’s decision to sell all Japan operations to the Softbank Group (after Vodafone had previously split off and sold fixed-line and other operations to Softbank in earlier transactions).
Photographs below show the world famous Vodafone board on Tokyo-Shibuya’s Hachiko-square being replaced by the SoftBank advertisement from June 14, 2006.
SoftBank acquired Vodafone-Japan and rebranded to SoftBank mobile on June 14, 2006Rebranding advertisement boards along Tokyo’s Yamanote ring line. Noteworthy are the cheese, cow, car tire and ice cream bar shaped mobile phone covers, which Vodafone offered because it was short of new phone models, and which did not help to improve Vodafone’s brand in Japan
The Vodafone brand is replaced by the SoftBank brand all over Japan
Saturday June 10, 2006 was the first time we saw SoftBank replacing the Vodafone brand in Japan – bringing a formal end to Europe’s largest ever investment in Japan.
Vodafone’s withdrawal from Japan is a turning point in more ways than one and has wider implications for Europe (read below).
Vodafone’s withdrawal also shows, that the values of cross-cultural management skills are often underestimated.
SoftBank’s brand strategy
Rebranding from Vodafone to SoftBank after SoftBank acquired Vodafone Japan
Upper image shows the world-famous Vodafone board on Shibuya’s hachiko square, which has appeared in many movies and TV shows. It will soon be replaced.
Lower image shows one of the first SoftBank advertisements in Tokyo’s busiest commuter railstation Shinjuku showing Sharp’s mobile-TV handset.
Implications for Europe of Vodafone’s withdrawal from Japan
As a European myself, I am looking at the wider implications for Europe of Vodafone’s withdrawal from Japan – and our company was recently awarded a contract by the European Union Government on exactly these issues – as well as others.
Vodafone’s investment was by far the largest European investment in Japan. What is maybe less well known is that Vodafone was dispatching a relatively large stream of managers between several continents (Europe, Australia etc) and Japan. Several times when visiting the KDDI Designing Center for example I could meet young German Vodafone managers who had just arrived for a management position at Vodafone-Japan, and who were studying the mobile phone handsets in KDDI’s showroom. These expatriates all left within a few weeks of SoftBank taking control of the company.
As a result of these interactions, Vodafone could bring J-Phone’s J-Sky mobile internet service to Europe, which was adapted for European conditions and rebranded “Vodafone Live!”. There would be no “Vodafone Live!” in Europe without Vodafone’s acquisition of J-Phone (including JSky). Vodafone also brought SHARP and Toshiba mobile handsets to Europe.
Apart from the immediate impact on Vodafone as a Corporation, we expect also a more general longterm impact from the strong reduction of Europe-Japan technology exchanges due to Vodafone’s withdrawal from Japan.
Vodafone’s withdrawal from Japan also shows how difficult it is for European telecom firms to succeed in Japan – and for Japanese firms in the telecom sector to succeed in Europe. Our company knows this first-hand from our work for NTT-Communications, and some other Japanese companies. – Read our presentation to Japanese industry associations here (in Japanese language).
It also shows how easy it is to underestimate the importance of cross-cultural management skills and the associated perils
While large US corporations, including INTEL, General Motors, and Motorola have been forced by confrontation with Japan’s competition to completely reshape themselves, this has not yet happened to any large European corporation because of the larger perceived separation between EU and Japan.
As a consequence of our CEO’s briefing entitled “Why Japan is several years ahead of Europe in telecommunications and what Europe can do to catch up” on March 23, 2006 for the Technology Attaches of the Embassies of the 25 European Union countries here in Tokyo our company has been awarded a project contract by the Government of the European Union to examine EU vs Japan benchmarking issues in telecommunications and related key technology areas.
Today, Monday April 24, 2006 at 7:30am, IKEA invited about 300 guests to celebrate the opening of the first 100% IKEA-owned IKEA store in Japan. We had the honor of working for IKEA – IKEA is another company that “thinks different” in so many creative ways. We wish them all the best in Japan!
IKEA had attempted earlier to establish business in Japan via a joint-venture established in 1974. This Joint-Venture was terminated in 1986, and IKEA ended business in Japan in 1986. Interestingly – and this is not the only such case – its only that IKEA itself at that time failed in Japan. The business IKEA created in this joint-venture actually continued successfully without IKEA even after IKEA had left Japan.
About 20 years later, this is now IKEA’s second venture into Japan.
The photographs shows Mr Koshichi Fujishiro, the Mayor of the City of Funabashi, and Mr Gordon Gustavsson, Manager of the new IKEA Funabashi store sawing the traditional log. Witnessing the log sawing ceremony are Ms Akiko Domoto, Governor of the Chiba Prefecture, His Excellency, Mikael Lindstrom, the Ambassador of Sweden, Anders Dahlvig, CEO of the global IKEA Group and Tommy Kullberg, CEO of IKEA-Japan:
IKEA opening ceremony for the IKEA store in Funabashi
Opening ceremony for IKEA’s store in Funabashi
Opening ceremony of the IKEA store in Funabashi: the Mayor of Funabashi and the IKEA store manager saw a log
A JR-Keiyo Line train with IKEA logos passing the new IKEA store in Minami-Funabashi:
Investor AB’s corporate academy Novare requested education about Japan’s technology industry sector
Eurotechnology Japan KK educates 30 CFOs of Investor AB portfolio companies about Japan
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, and the program was organized by Investor AB’s Corporate Academy Novare.
Investor AB CFOs needed education about Japan’s telecom sector, particularly regarding Ericsson and Nokia
The Swedish controllers had asked for briefing on Japan’s telecom industries. 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.
Today (March 23, 2006) I was invited to brief the Technology Attaches of the Embassies of the 25 European Union countries here in Tokyo about Japan’s telecommunications sector (both fixed net and wireless) in a one hour presentation + discussion. I had offered several alternative topics and the conference of EU Technology Attaches selected the most provocative title I had offered: “Why Japan is several years ahead of Europe in telecommunications and what Europe can do to catch up”
Vodafone KK’s Chairman and former NTT-DoCoMo Vice-President Tsuda, who had worked 34 years at NTT and DoCoMo (and who resigned from his Vodafone-Japan CEO position a few weeks after being head-hunted), said in a recent interview with Bloomberg that “Japan is way ahead in 3G”. – therefore, although this title is clearly provocative, it’s clearly worthwhile examining this question. With the sale of Vodafone KK to SoftBank last week, the timing of this briefing was particularly interesting. My presentation discussed the following questions:
Is Japan ahead of Europe in Telecommunications and fixed as well as wireless broadband?
Why?
What is the impact?
Is this important?
What Europe can do to catch up
EU awards project contract to Eurotechnology Japan KK to document the status of fixed and wireless broad band communications in EU vs Japan
As a consequence of this presentation the EU awards project contract to Eurotechnology Japan KK to document the status of fixed and wireless broad band communications in EU vs Japan, and to prepare recommendations for the EU to learn from Japan, and accelerate progress in Europe.
Vodafone failed in Japan not for one single reason but for hundreds of reasons, which can be grouped into two groups
Soft factors:
Japan knowledge at HQ, and knowledge at HQ about the specifics of Japan’s telecom sector (or lack thereof).
choice of management structure (there were attempts to correct the management structure, however too little and too late).
attitude displayed both privately e.g. within the Japanese industry sector and publicly via marketing messages and advertising
choice of executives and lower ranking managers and their knowledge and experience in Japan’s telecom sector (or lack thereof)
lack of sufficient know-how and experience to manage a large Japanese company, and particular the chain of retail stores
and many more
Hard factors:
far too low budgets for infrastructure investment resulting in much lower coverage and network quality compared to competitors NTT-DoCoMo and KDDI/au and TuKa, Willcom and others. As a consequence of far too low investment budgets, Vodafone failed three times to introduce 3G services in Japan. (3G services were not successfully introduced until after the acquisition by Softbank, and after conversion of Vodafone KK to Softbank-Mobile).
mobile phone handsets were inferior to the handsets offered by competitors NTT-DoCoMo and KDDI, and TuKa
and many more
vodafone brand disappears from Japan
Long answer
Find a long answer in this blog post below, in our other blog posts, and in some detail including statistics and financial data in our Softbank Report.
On Friday March 17, 2006, Vodafone and Softbank announced that Vodafone sells Vodafone KK (the totality of all Vodafone operations in Japan) to Softbank.
It has been reported that on Monday March 20, 2006, Softbank started to move all Vodafone KK staff, furniture and equipment from Vodafone KK’s former headquarters in the top floors of the Atago-Greenhills-Mori-Tower to Softbank headquarters in Shiodome (near Shinbashi). Also Softbank started to arrange that essentially all foreign expatriate managers left Vodafone KK – some stayed in Japan working for other IT companies, some returned to European Vodafone divisions, and some pursue telecom careers in USA, India, Bangladesh, or elsewhere.
By total coincidence, I had dinner a high-level manager of Vodafone KK, of European nationality, at the indian restaurant Moti’s in Tokyo-Roppongi on exactly the same day, the Friday March 17, 2006 a few hours after the sale of Vodafone KK to Softbank was announced. I asked him: “Which of the following is true:”
Vodafone never did any market research in Japan?
Vodafone did market research in Japan, but the quality was low?
Vodafone did market research in Japan, but nobody read it?
This Vodafone KK manager’s answer at the indian dinner was (3): market research was done about Japan’s mobile phone market, but the market research was not sufficiently taken into account in the business and strategy planning.
Fact is, that Vodafone KK took many major strategy and market decisions in Japan, which were not related to the realities of Japan’s market. Here one example. When “rebranding” (=changing the company / product / services names) from J-Phone to Vodafone, this “rebranding” campaign was centered on global roaming, i.e. Vodafone enabled Japanese customers to use Japanese J-Phone/Vodafone mobile phones in a very large number of countries outside Japan as well as inside Japan. This was at a time, when Japan’s mainstream mobile 2G phone system which both DoCoMo and J-Phone used was PDC, while much of the rest of the world, especially Europe used GSM. However, what Vodafone overlooked was, that at that time DoCoMo had about 30,000 roaming customers, out of approx. 50 million subscribers, i.e. only about 0.06% of Japanese mobile phone users used international roaming at that time. Thus Vodafone KK in Japan focused their main nation-wide poster and TV and other media campaign on about 0.06% of the Japanese market – less than a niche. (The reason we know how many roaming customers DoCoMo had at that time, is because one of Vodafone KK’s competitors in Japan engaged our company Eurotechnology Japan KK to analyze Japan’s roaming market, and help our client to develop strategy to better compete with Vodafone KK’s roaming products, which were aggressively marketed, and the core of Vodafone KK’s marketing focus).
Another example was Vodafone KK’s strategic focus on Japan’s prepaid market. In 2006 there were about 2.6 million prepaid mobile phone customers in Japan, i.e. about 2.7% of the market, while DoCoMo had about 45,200 prepaid subscribers, i.e. about 0.09% of DoCoMo’s subscribers were prepaid customers. Since the prepaid market in Europe (especially Italy where about 1/2 of the market is prepaid) is extremely important and highly profitable, Vodafone decided on the strategy to focus strongly on the development and growth of Japan’s prepaid market. Almost at the same time however, a national campaign started in Japan linking unregistered and illegally traded prepaid mobile phones to crime, and a law was proposed in Japan’s parliament to outlaw any type of prepaid mobile phones. Thus Vodafone KK found itself on the one hand promoting and investing to develop prepaid mobile phone services in Japan, developing, purchasing (as was the business model in Japan at that time) and bringing to market special prepaid handsets, and organizing national media campaigns promoting Vodafone prepaid mobile phones, while at the same time on the other hand facing the possibility that Japan’s parliament would outlaw these same prepaid mobile phones, and a broad press and TV national discussion on how prepaid mobile phones are linked to crime. The end result was, that instead of outlawing prepaid mobile phones, it was decided to introduce far stricter registration requirements and ID requirements for mobile phones and especially for prepaid mobile phones, and the unauthorized/unregistered sale or transfer of prepaid mobile phones in Japan was made a crime. The end effect for Vodafone of course was a commercial failure of Vodafone’s prepaid mobile phone campaign, in addition to a general decrease of ARPU (average revenue per user).
As a consequence of these and other factors, Vodafone KK’s market share continuously decreased, subscribers moved from Vodafone KK to DoCoMo and KDDI/au, and the financial performance of Vodafone KK deteriorated, in the end convincing Vodafone that the best option was to sell Vodafone’s Japan operations and terminate business activities in Japan.
You can find further details and statistics, financial performance and market share data during this period in our Softbank report.
Bloomberg: Vodafone-Japan CEO Tsuda seeks growth in Japan, not sale
About one year ago, in an interview with Bloomberg (“Vodafone KK’s Tsuda seeks growth in Japan, not sale“), I mentioned that a sale of Vodafone’s Japan operations to Softbank might be the way Vodafone will go in Japan. This seems to be happening now and negotiations to this effect were confirmed by both Softbank and Vodafone over the weekend.
The potential deal
Although a deal has not been closed yet, it is widely reported that a sale of Vodafone’s Japan operations to Softbank is very likely to be closed within a few weeks. What could this deal look like?
As reported by Bloomberg Vodafone KK’s capitalization at the point of delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange was around YEN 1.4 Trillion (= about US$ 12 Billion). Bloomberg mentions estimations by London based analysts who value Vodafone KK in the range US$ 14 to 16 Billion. Of course, if a deal is actually concluded, it might be a complex deal with several components, not just a simple cash price, and any cash value will not be determined by analysts in London, but on the negotiating table between Softbank and Vodafone, and the final deal could be more complex than a simple sale against cash payment.
In any case, this deal – if it happens – promises to become one of the largest M&A transactions ever in Japan sofar in terms of cash value. Vodafone is reported to prefer a cash deal, and Softbank has been reported to consider a leveraged buy-out (LBO) where Softbank will take debt against the to-be-acquired company.
It has also been reported that Softbank seems to be planning to change the name of the resulting company, so the “Vodafone” brand is not likely to survive in Japan.
What is Softbank likely to do with Vodafone’s Japan operations
An acquisition of Vodafone’s Japan operations will be the completion of Softbank‘s march to build a full-scale telecommunications group on a par with NTT and KDDI through a series of acquisitions plus internal growth.
Softbank in this new shape will become a much more serious competitor for NTT and KDDI, which both have succeeded to transform themselves from former monopolies into some of the world’s most advanced telecom operators.
In a sense Softbank is already where DoCoMo and KDDI are working very hard to get to: DoCoMo and KDDI are working hard to build content and transaction businesses (such as shopping, financial services, auctions and music), because pure traffic revenue (ARPU) is driven down by relentless competition.
Softbank is strongly linked to YAHOO-Japan, and YAHOO-Japan demonstrated it’s strength by driving eBay out of Japan – so Softbank is already where DoCoMo and KDDI want to go. All Softbank still needed was a wireless network, and with a Vodafone acquisition, Softbank will have a wireless network much faster than expected.
A Vodafone/Softbank deal will not be a good development for eAccess/eMobile, and eAccess/eMobile is reported to have submitted documents to Japan’s regulatory authorities regarding Softbank’s wireless license. It will be interesting how the regulating government ministry will decide on the regulatory aspects of any Softbank/Vodafone deal. In the past few years Japan’s government has been singularly focused on creating the conditions to make Japan the most advanced IT market in the world, so I think we can be confident to expect a wise decision – wise for Japan, not necessarily beneficial for particular mobile operators.
What made Vodafone change it’s mind about Japan?
As reported by Bloomberg, one year ago Vodafone had the clear intention to remain in Japan for the next 10, 20, 30 years. What made Vodafone change it’s mind?
As widely reported, Vodafone was loosing market share in Japan’s mobile phone market over the last several years.
With number portability being introduced in Japan from autumn 2006, and with three new operators entering the market during 2006-2007, the competitive environment will become much more severe than it is now, decreasing pure network profitability, while at the same time massive network investments are necessary.
Analysis of Vodafone-Japan’s subscriber numbers shows that early warning signs appeared already in 2002 – 2002 would have been the time for Vodafone to take decisive action to turn the business around in Japan.
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.
Lanxess continues refocussing following spin-out from Bayer
Textiles business moves to Asia
On 17 November 2005, Lanxess (Köln, Germany) and Asahi Kasei Fibers Corporation (Osaka, Japan) announced the planned sale of Lanxess’ Dorlastan business to Asahi Kasei Fibers Corporation.
Lanxess’ Dorlastan division includes production sites at Dormagen, Germany, and in Bushy Park, South Carolina, USA:
Dormagen (Germany): currently 280 employees, 170 to be transferred to Asahi Kasei Fibers Corp.
Bushy Park (South Carolina, USA): currently 190 employees, 160 to be transferred to Asahi Kasei Fibers Corp.
Lanxess
Lanxess was founded in 2004 as a spin-out from Germany’s chemical giant Bayer, and includes some of Bayer’s former chemicals and polymers divisions.
Lanxess focuses on manufacturing and marketing plastics, rubber, intermediates and speciality chemicals.
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
Here Swedish Managers of the SonyEricsson Creative Design Center from Lund/Sweden:
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.]
Today’s top article in Nikkei is about Cable and Wireless-Japan: the article reports that Cable and Wireless is in discussion with Softbank and a private equity firm to sell their Japan operations. Apparently this news article is not confirmed, and it already mentions a purchase prize on the order of US$ 100 million. This article appeared in the top position in Nikkei – but there are several things a bit mysterious about it.
I did not follow Cable and Wireless recently in Japan, but it seems that C&W made a loss of YEN 61.6 OKU on sales of YEN 713 OKU, i.e. almost 10% loss.
Spent all morning discussing with one of the innovation managers of a big European telco. Interesting. Spent afternoon with a US bio-tech company which which is thinking of asking us to build their business in Japan, and in the evening listened to a talk by Tadashi Onodera, the CEO of KDDI. Expected him to talk mainly about mobile – but he did not. His focus was a national VOIP network they are building, attacking the fixed line income of NTT. Got hold of him after his talk and discussed with him for about 10 minutes.
UPDATE: on October 26, 2004, Softbank announced the acquisition of Cable & Wireless IDC. Total cost of the acquistion is announced as YEN 12.3 billion (= US$ 110 million)
TELC has sales of approx. YEN 120 billion (US$ 1.2 billion) per year, and employs about 4700 people.
KONE
KONE was founded in 1910. KONE’s annual sales are on the order of EURO 7 billion, and KONE employs about 47,000 people. KONE’s shares are listed on NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Exchange.
Yamaha Motor Group and Mitsui Trading Group establish Yamaha Motor Deutschland GmbH and Yamaha Motor (UK) Limited
In 1971-1972 Yamaha Motor Group and Mitsui Group establish Yamaha Motor Deutschland GmbH in Germany and Yamaha Motor (UK) Limited in UK to import, market and sell Yamaha motor products in UK and Germany:
Yamaha Motor Deutschland GmbH:
Yamaha Motor Group: 40% investment
Mitsui Group: 60% investment
Yamaha Motor (UK) Limited
Yamaha Motor Group: 25% investment
Mitsui Group: 75% investment
Expansion to Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Poland
Subsequently Yamaha Motors and Mitsui expand imports, marketing and sales in Europe:
Yamaha Motor Austria GmbH: 100% Yamaha investment
Yamaha Motor Hungary Kft: 100% Yamaha investment
Yamaha Motor Czech Spol. s.r.o.: 100% Yamaha investment
Mitsui Motor Polska Sp. z.o.o.: 100% Mitsui Group investment
