Panasonic withdraws from the semiconductor market! Losing chip business to be resold to a Chinese company

November 28-According to Nikkei, Panasonic has announced the sale of its loss-making semiconductor business to Taiwan's Nuvoton Technology. It is understood that Panasonic first entered the semiconductor industry in 1952, but now the business is in trouble. This event means that Japan has transformed from a major chip manufacturing country in the 1980s and 1990s to a semiconductor manufacturing equipment and material supplier, mainly serving semiconductor companies in China and South Korea.

Panasonic's chip manufacturing business once ranked among the world's top ten manufacturers in sales around 1990.

Founded in 1918, Panasonic experienced a severe financial crisis in 2012 and has since undergone massive layoffs. In a forum, Matsushita Electric Co., Ltd. Tsuga Ichihiro talked about layoffs that year, "the company's 7,000 headquarters, decisively cut to 130 people." In 2017, news of large-scale layoffs also came out. In March 2019, news of Panasonic's "moving knife" in semiconductors came. As for the chip manufacturing business, in April of this year, Panasonic announced plans to sell some of its business to its counterpart Rohm in Kyoto. It also emphasized the development of automotive products such as chips for controlling electric vehicle batteries, which is the focus of their partnership with Tesla.

In the last fiscal year ending March this year, Panasonic Semiconductor sales were 92.2 billion yen ($ 840 million), and operating losses amounted to 23.5 billion yen ($ 215 million).

Panasonic originally put the profitability of the semiconductor business in this fiscal year first, but because the trade war weakened demand, Panasonic decided to give up the business.

Panasonic's overall forecast is that operating profit will decline by 27% this fiscal year. The company also plans to withdraw from the liquid crystal display business in 2021 as part of the company's operation to clear its loss-making business.

China's Nuvoton Technology Corp., which acquired the Panasonic semiconductor business, is part of Winbond Electronics, another Chinese memory chip maker.

Nuvoton, a subsidiary of Taiwan-based professional memory chip maker Winbond, produces microcontrollers, controllers, and chips related to audio and power.

Japanese companies once dominated the global semiconductor industry. Slow decisions on investment and mergers have left them behind South Korean and Taiwanese competitors.

Sony is currently one of the few Japanese companies still operating in the semiconductor business. The company ’s camera sensor chip ranks first in the global market share and has a monopoly advantage. In recent years, Sony has also invested more resources in this field. Expand technology and capacity advantages.

Last year, no Japanese company was named a top ten global producer by Gartner, and their total market share has shrunk to 7%. This defeat of Panasonic sounded their alarm again.