Word: tvs
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...belt carrying newly assembled TVs to their final quality checks churns behind him, Take emphasizes that Aquos is not just Sharp's latest hit product. It is the core of a strategic shift that has transformed the company from a perennial also-ran to Asian rivals like Sony, Matsushita and Samsung into the world's hottest electronics company. "Everybody from 1 to 100 uses a TV, many of them for three to five hours a day," he says, clearly delighted by the thought of all of us plopped in front of so many idiot boxes, each of them potentially bearing...
...that were always a little too expensive and a little too poorly engineered to attract many customers. It was a dispiriting struggle, says Machida, but it taught him an ironclad belief that is now axiomatic throughout the company: "If you are in electronics and you are not strong in TVs, your business and your brand will suffer...
...theory. Sharp, he knew, had long excelled at developing products featuring liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). It released the first mass-market LCD calculator in 1973, developed its first flat-panel LCD TV in 1987 and dabbled in LCD televisions throughout the 1990s. Building on that foundation, Machida moved LCD TVs to the forefront of Sharp's strategy. He spent heavily over three years on the design, manufacture and marketing of a new flagship TV brand dubbed Aquos, and his bet paid off. Launched in January 2001--a moment referred to inside the company as the Big Bang--Aquos quickly became...
Sharp's momentum has been a drag for struggling Sony, which recently brought in a non-Japanese CEO, Howard Stringer, to orchestrate a turnaround. Sony also demonstrates Machida's theory: the company has lost its primacy in TVs, and it shows. In July, Sony reported a quarterly loss of $330 million in its consumer-electronics division. Sharp, meanwhile, posted operating profits of $138 million for its consumer-products division...
...manufacturing LCDs, Machida is playing to Sharp's strengths and avoiding margin-killing commodity products. Taking on Goliaths like LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics across every LCD product line would be foolish, he says. They're dominant, for example, in mass-market LCD panels used in smaller, cheaper TVs and in laptops. Rather than engage them in a murderous price war, Sharp concentrates almost exclusively on ever larger TVs or on small, high-quality panels found in cell phones, car navigation systems and handheld game players like Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS. That tactic has enabled Sharp...