The DRAM Industry has seen a long and painful consolidation with many players going bankrupt and others being gobbled up by bigger companies. Many companies left the DRAM business because of high capital costs, relentless competition and technology upgrades every year. In the last five years only around 10 companies were left from Taiwan, Korea, […]
Japanese Government Gave the go ahead in restarting the nuclear power plants in the country after all the nuclear reactors were shut down post the Fukushima accident. Despite massive protests in the capital city of Tokyo where thousands of people took part, the government remained adamant with the PM dismissed them as noise. Note Germany […]
Japan after the Fukushima disaster had set out on a plan to increase the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix which is abysmally low. Japan has very low capacity in wind and solar energy compared to the more environmentally conscious developed countries like Germany. Japan which had led the solar market in the […]
Updated: 7/06/2016 Japanese Solar Panel companies Sharp, Kyocera, Panasonic-Sanyo, Mitsubishi were the top solar panel producers in the world. Solar Energy in Japan has a long future dating back to 1994 when the government introduced capital subsidies to boost solar energy installations on rooftops. Till 2004, Japan was the largest solar market in the world […]
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
Japanese Companies which were the leading solar companies in 2006 have steadily lost the top global rankings to Chinese companies. Now many of the top Japanese Solar Energy Companies are retreating from markets and manufacturing. Sharp which was the largest solar company in 2009 and 2010 has radically restructured its strategy but is still losing marketshare. Panasonic the second biggest solar company has closed down its Japanese factory. Other Japanese solar companies like Mitsubishi, Kyocera are also being forced to rethink solar panel manufacturing.
Note most of the higher cost producers in the solar industry are effectively bankrupt and are only being supported by government or big parents. Many Western companies have already closed or are on the verge of closing. Some of the bankrupt companies are not finding buyers of their equipment even at 10c/dollar. Massive overcapacity remains in the solar industry particularly in China which is not being taken out fast enough which will probably lead to another bad year for solar stocks in 2012.