In recent years, the consumer electronics industry has witnessed the appearance of new rivals in such countries as South Korea, Taiwan and China, and increasingly fierce battles over market share and heightened price competition in the global market, paralleling progress in digitization, which has precipitated higher capital investment and saddled companies with heavier software development burdens and prompted the development of products based on universal components that make product differentiation increasingly difficult. The entry of competitors from the information technology (IT) industry has also raised the level of competition.
To survive such a fiercely competitive environment and continue to generate and enhance corporate value, JVC and KENWOOD consider the restructuring of Japan’s specialty manufacturing industry to be absolutely necessary.