Sanyo
SANYO Electric Co. Ltd. (三洋電機株式会社, San'yō Denki Kabushiki-gaisha) (TYO: 6764, Nasdaq: SANYY) is a major Japanese electronics company and Fortune 500 company whose headquarters is located in Moriguchi, Osaka prefecture, Japan targeting the middle of the market, with over 324 offices and plants worldwide and about 100,000 employees.
SANYO was founded by Toshio Iue (井植 歳男 Iue Toshio, 1902 - 1969), the brother-in-law of Konosuke Matsushita and also a former Matsushita employee, in 1947 and was incorporated in 1950. The company's name means three oceans in Japanese, referring to the founder's ambition to sell their products worldwide, across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.
History
SANYO got its start as a manufacturer of bicycle lamps. In 1952 they made Japan's first plastic radio and in 1954 they made Japan's first pulsator-type washing machine.
Technologically SANYO has had good ties with Sony, supporting the Betamax video format from invention until the mid 1980's (the best selling video recording in the UK in 1983 was the Sanyo VTC5000), and later being an early adopter of the highly successful Video8 camcorder format. Lately Sanyo and Sony have seemingly had a technological falling out, with Sanyo backing HD DVD and Sony backing their Blu-ray Disc, as of 2006 this format battle has not been resolved.
In North America, SANYO manufactures CDMA cellular phones exclusively for Sprint-Nextel corporation's Sprint PCS brand. Sanyo has for three years consecutive years received the J.D. Power and Associates award for having the highest overall satisfaction out of 8 of the most popular mobile phone manufacturers. However in 2005 SANYO tied with LG for this position.
The 2004 Chuetsu Earthquake severely struck Sanyo's semiconductor plant and as a result Sanyo recorded a huge financial loss for that year. The 2005 fiscal year financial results saw a 205 billion yen net income loss. The same year the company announced a restructuring plan called the SANYO Evolution Project, launching a new corporate vision to make the corporation into an environmental company, plowing investment into strong products like rechargeable batteries, solar photovoltaics, air conditioning, hybrid car batteries and key consumer electronics such as the Xacti camera, projectors and mobile phones.
SANYO posted signs of recovery after the announcement of positive operating income of 2.6 billion yen. SANYO remains the world number one producer of rechargeable batteries.
Tomoyo Nanoka is the current chairwoman of the company, a former NHK anchorwoman. The President is Toshimasa Iue who is the grandson of Sanyo's founder Toshio Iue.
In January 2006 SANYO received a massive capital injection from Goldman Sachs, SMBC and Daiwa Securities and resulted in 5 members of the banks represented on the 9-person Board of Directors.
See also
External links
- SANYO Global
- SANYO USA
- SANYO Europe
- SANYO LSI Technology India
- SANYO Canada
- SANYO Oceania (Australia / New Zealand)
- SANYO Europe
- Silicon Valley InfoZone - Sanyo
- SANYO DENKI
- SANYO denki
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