Word: kameyama
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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 last year and is cranking out thousands of Sharp's hot-selling large-screen flat-panel Aquos TVs per month. Flat TVs are going to be critical in the battle for market share among electronics companies this Christmas season, and Sharp is exceptionally well armed...
...cost of staying ahead in that game is huge, as competitors are pouring resources into the industry. Right next door to the Kameyama plant that opened last year, Sharp is building a larger, more advanced plant, costing another $1.4 billion, that is scheduled to open in 2006. But Sharp's competitors are also building furiously. In a joint venture, LG Electronics and Royal Philips Electronics are spending $5.1 billion to create the world's largest plant for LCDs. Sony, whose lack of flat-screen capacity has been a huge disadvantage, is teaming with Samsung in a $2 billion LCD venture...
...stay one step ahead requires a lot of spending on research and development and on cutting-edge factories. Sharp just opened a $1.5 billion plant in Kameyama, in central Japan, capable of pumping out 45,000 sheets of glass per month, with each sheet providing glass for eight 32-in. TV screens. And right next door, the company is building another $1.5 billion factory that will be able to produce 100,000 sheets of glass each month, with each sheet yielding eight 45-in. screens. But Sharp's competitors have also joined the race. A joint venture between LG Electronics...
...Fuji TV producer and Bayside creator Kameyama argues that Japanese viewers already get plenty of fantasy from Hollywood and are hungry for domestic productions in which they can see reflections of their own lives and experiences. That's why the whole Bayside Shakedown universe was designed as a metaphor for Japan, Inc. "We wanted to depict the daily struggles that average salarymen and office ladies face every day," he says. "We simply transferred it to a police setting." This approach also makes abundant financial sense, adds leading man Oda: "There is no way we can compete with Hollywood budgets...
...course, the best of the breed, Bayside Shakedown. "We have learned a lot about viewer habits from our work in television," says Kameyama. "We give viewers what they want." This summer, he is gambling that what Japanese viewers really want is not Arnold Schwarzenegger or The One but a crime-fighting salaryman who, try as he might, just can't bring himself to litter...