Japanese Conglomerates like Sharp, Panasonic, Mitsubishi used to be the undisputed colusseses of 1980s when they could do no wrong. These Japanese giants which were grown under the care of the Japanese government department METI have operations in hundreds of countries and revenues in the hundreds of billions. However for the past few years they have not been able to earn decent profits. And last year in 2011 they have mounted massive losses. Panasonic is going to lose an astounding $10 billion this year while others like Sony, Sharp and other will do equally badly. While some factors are temporary like
Chinese Solar Companies have increased their global marketshare of the Solar Panel to around 60% from virtually 0% in 2006.The Solar Panel Dominance of the Chinese has been growing since last year as Europeans and Japanese have found no answer to their cheap solar panels.Q-Cells,Solarworld and other European companies have been reduced to bit players in the Solar Market as the low cost Asians have ramped up their capacity and shipments in 2009 and 2010.The only reason that they continue to survive is the more than 100% growth in the Solar Demand in 2010.With oversupply expected in 2011,Europeans will be virtually wiped out from the world solar panel market due to their high cost uncompetitive business models.European solar factories are closing as the remaining companeis shift their production to low cost Malaysia and Singapore.
IMS has released the top 10 suppliers of solar panels for 2008-2009.What is striking about the the rankings is that the Chinese solar companies have improved their ranking in the top 10 , all the Japanese companies have had their rankings decreased . The low cost capabilities of the Chinese has led to this change.I […]