Exclusive Interview
Exclusive Interview Panasonic gears up for global expansion The electronics giant is changing says Hitoshi Otsuki Hitoshi Otsuki is Senior Managing Director and Member of the Board of Directors at Panasonic Corporation. The big news for the world market is that Panasonic, which has been very Japan-centric until now, aims to become more globally-oriented, with overseas sales in 2010 at 48% growing to 55% in 2013, and up to 60% or more in 2019. But what initiatives will be made to achieve this? There are two key initiatives I would like to mention. The first is to expand our business in emerging countries. The most important countries and regions are BRICs + V (Vietnam) and MINTs + B (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey and the Balkan countries). Secondly, we will enhance our product line-up to reach the high-volume segment in emerging markets. Panasonic is changing, to carry out product planning from customer perspectives. We hope to increase the overseas sales ratio, including sales in these regions to 55% of our entire group sales by fiscal year 2013. Which of your businesses will be pivotal to your global plan? The six businesses, Energy Systems, Heating / Refrigeration / Air Conditioning and Network AV are the core businesses of the Panasonic Group. They are positioned as a driving force to boost the sales and profit of the whole company. Although the business sizes of Healthcare, Security, and LED are still small, we will grow them significantly as ‘pillars of the nextgeneration businesses’. Panasonic also pursues its possibilities to grow, offering solutions for the entire home and the entire building, by focusing on these strategic businesses. With the six key businesses, Panasonic plans to increase sales by 1.2tn yen or approximately 10bn Euros, which is more than 80% of total sales growth in fiscal year 2013. How do you plan to grow sales and/or market share in the field of Network AV? Flat-panel TV is our main product and we will thoroughly refine models and strengthen profitability to win out in the global competition. In the PDP TV business, we will further strengthen product competitiveness by maximising our advantage for 3DTV and lowering power consumption drastically. In the meantime, we will introduce LED backlight TVs this year as a part of our LCD TV business and expand its sales with our top power saving LED in the industry. And in the field of Home Appliances? In the Home Appliances business, we will globally expand sales with our products specifically designed for the high-volume segment. In Japan, China and Asian countries, we have restructured and improved our local manufacturing and sales sites to expand our business. In Europe, we will start fullyfledged business to develop more products speedily with outsourcing, such as OEM from local manufacturers. We will greatly strengthen our core environmental technologies including heat pumps, inverters and green materials, and apply them to products in each region. And we aim to achieve an annual overseas sales growth rate of 15% in white goods. How much are you putting back into R&D and how does this compare to your competitors? Panasonic will drastically shift its management resources to the growth businesses. At present, sales in our six key businesses account for 35% of the consolidated sales in FY2010 (ended in March 2010). We will put 54% of our capital investment and 67% of our corporate R&D investment into these key businesses during the three years of our mid-term management plan, which is called Green Transformation 2012. Finally, with the opening of your Global Consumer Research Centre (Lifestyle Research Hub), and other centres in places such as India and Brazil, you plan to strengthen lifestyle research as part of the new global plan. Why this research is so important? Expanding overseas business in emerging countries, we have developed our products for high-volume segment. In addressing the high-volume segment, which is key to this overseas expansion plan, it is extremely important for us to carry out product planning from a customer perspective, considering which functions we must have and which are nonessential. We have our new research Hitoshi Otsuki of the Panasonic Corporation centres in India and Brazil and will also establish our Global Consumer Research Center in our head office in Japan, to share knowledge and promote optimum standardisation of all lifestyle research institutes. While carrying out horizontal expansion, optimum standardisation of the survey tools and know-how in each centre, we will consolidate our survey information and use it to analyse global market trend and purchase information. We will further improve our lifestyle research and offer products for high-volume segments, one after another, with our innovative product planning and designing. www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Wednesday, 8 th September 2010 17
