Shutting of Panasonic's last plasma plant latest nail in coffin of Japan's TV industry

Panasonic’s move to close its last plasma television factory completes a painful reckoning that has all but killed off Japan’s TV industry, once the pride of the country’s postwar rise to technological and economic power.

In a golden era that began in the 1970s, Japan’s TV makers brought cutting-edge yet affordable technology and brand names like Sony, the Trinitron and Panasonic into living rooms across the West, at the expense of US and European rivals.

But after dominating the business for decades, companies like Sony Sharp and Panasonic have taken less than a decade to slide into deep losses, becoming also-rans to a new breed of nimble, cash-rich rivals like Samsung Electronics.

Osaka-based Panasonic will pull out of the plasma TV business by the end of the financial year to March next year, sources familiar with the situation said on Wednesday. The news was first reported by the Nikkei business daily.

The end has come sooner than expected, underlining company president Kazuhiro Tsuga’s determination to weed out weak operations as he focuses on higher-margin products to end years of losses at the consumer electronics conglomerate.

All that will remain of Japan’s TV manufacturing are three cutting-edge liquid crystal display plants, with Sharp’s partially owned by foreign players, and a few assembly plants. Storied Japanese brands such as Toshiba and Hitachi are outsourcing the bulk of their sets to other manufacturers.

Like the US and European companies they defeated in the industry decades ago, the Japanese can chalk up their fate as much to hungry competitors as to their own mistakes.