Word: sharp
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...technology has always been Sharp's strength. It was the first company to mass-produce the LCD calculator, and has been a leader in displays for gadgets like cell phones, camcorders and portable videogame consoles. But Sharp's success in the flat-screen world is the result of its willingness to marry elegant design to its technical skill by using teams that broke the rules of traditional Japanese business...
...late 1990s, Sharp's president, Katsuhiko Machida, was determined to shed the company's image as a mere parts provider, so he approached industrial designer Toshiyuki Kita for help. "Our goal was to create not just a flat TV but a completely new product," says Masatsugu Teragawa, Sharp's corporate audiovisual director. "It had to look nothing like what we know TV to look like...
...rare move for a Japanese manufacturer, Machida blended Kita and Sharp's design teams from the initial stages of development. "Japanese management tends to think that designers are completely ignorant of business strategies," says Takekazu Inoue, senior consultant of brand and design strategies at the Japan Research Institute. "A bunch of doodlers who are only expected to create pretty packages...
...design edge--and the company's manufacturing capacity--helped Sharp dominate the $80 billion flat-panel market for years, with more than 16 million Aquos screens sold since 2001. But competitors rushed in, and by 2005, Sharp had fallen behind Sony and Samsung. Consumers have benefited: three out of four TVs sold in the U.S. are now flat panels, and prices for 25-in.-to-29-in. models have dropped 72% in the past three years, according to DisplaySearch...
That pressure has pitted manufacturers against one another to come up with thinner, lighter, cleaner LCDs. Sharp plans to build a $3.4 billion factory near Osaka to produce bigger screens more efficiently. Yet, Teragawa says, as flat screens grew in popularity, the products became virtually indistinguishable from one another...