In August 2022, eight Japanese companies, including Toyota, Sony, Kioxia, NEC, and others, established Rapidus, Japan's national team for next-generation semiconductors, with a generous subsidy of 70 billion yen from the Japanese government.
"Rapidus" Latin meaning "fast", This company's goal is to go hand in hand with TSMC and achieve the localisation of the 2nm process in 2027.
The last mission to revitalise Japan's semiconductor industry is the company was established in 2002, Billda, and Samsung 10 years after the battle, was the South Koreans beat to bankruptcy, the last bit of belongings were Micron packaged away.
On the eve of the explosion of that mobile terminal market, the entire Japanese semiconductor industry was in a great daze. As the saying goes, the country is unfortunate for the poets, and Elpida's bankruptcy has become an object of repeated chewing in the industrial world, and a series of semiconductor scar literature represented by "Lost Manufacturing" was born as a result.
During the same period, Japanese officials organised a number of catch-up and revival plans, but with little success.
After 2010, a new round of growth in the semiconductor industry, the once-powerful Japanese chip companies are almost collectively absent, the advantage of the field by the United States, South Korea and Taiwan are all divided.
Apart from memory chip company Kioxia, which has already been pocketed by Bain Capital, the last remaining cards in the Japanese chip industry are Sony and Renesas Electronics.
Over the past three years, the global pandemic superimposed on shrinking demand for consumer electronics was supposed to be a downturn for the chip industry. 2023, the global semiconductor industry is still bottoming out on the downside of the cycle, but Japan led all other regions in February, taking the lead in achieving a rebound in sales, and is likely to be the only region outside of Europe to achieve growth this year.
Perhaps it is the rebound of Japanese chip companies, coupled with the demand for supply chain security, driving the birth of the largest revival plan after Elpida Rapidus, its cooperation with IBM is also considered "Japan's return to the cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing industry's last chance, but also the best opportunity."
What has happened to the Japanese electronics industry since 2012, when Billda went bankrupt?
Post-Disaster Reconstruction
Billda's bankruptcy in 2012 was a landmark event, parallel to which was the total collapse of Japan's semiconductor industry, with the three giants Panasonic, Sony, and Sharp producing record losses, and Renesas heading to the brink of bankruptcy. The dramatic earthquake triggered by this bankruptcy also brought far-reaching secondary disasters to the Japanese industry:
One of them is the decline of the terminal brand: Sharp's TV, Toshiba's air conditioner, Panasonic's washing machine and Sony's mobile phone, the consumer electronics giants have almost all shrunk to become parts suppliers. The most tragic is Sony, camera, walkman, audio film and television these advantages of the project, one after another in the iPhone's muzzle.
The second is the collapse of the upstream industry chain: from the panel, memory, to chip manufacturing, can lose the battle to the Koreans basically lost. Once killed the Japanese memory chips, leaving only Toshiba flash a seedling, the results of Toshiba's transformation of nuclear power obstruction coupled with the impact of financial fraud, flash memory business renamed Kioxia, tearfully sold to Bain Capital.
Academic collective reflection at the same time, the Japanese official and industrial sector also launched a series of post-disaster reconstruction work, the first reconstruction object is Billda's difficult brother: Renesas Electronics.
Similar to Billda, Renesas Electronics integrated the semiconductor businesses of NEC, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi in addition to DRAM, and completed the integration work in April 2010, debuting as the world's fourth-largest semiconductor company.
In Japan missed the mobile Internet era of regret, Renesas heavy acquisition of Nokia's semiconductor division, plans to combine it with its own processor product line, on the last train of the wave of smart phones.
But the cost of heavy money to make up the ticket is a monthly loss of 2 billion yen, to 2011, the outbreak of Japan's Fukushima first nuclear power plant accident, superimposed on the production centre of gravity of Thailand's floods, Renesas loss reached 62.6 billion yen, half a foot into bankruptcy and liquidation.
The second object of reconstruction was Sony, once regarded by Jobs as a model for the electronics industry.
Sony's shortcomings can be chalked up to a disdain for software capabilities, which is one of the common problems of the Japanese electronics industry. Both its joint venture brand with Ericsson and Sony's smartphones have been touted as making the worst user experience phones with the best hardware.
In 2017, the Xperia XZ2P, which weighs half a kilo, is the culmination of this "hardware".
In 2002, Sony's pillar business TV began to sustain losses, Walkman directly strangled by the iPod, followed by digital cameras, smart phones one after another fell to the altar. 2012, Sony's losses reached a calendar year's highest of 456.6 billion yen, the market value of $ 125 billion from the peak of the 2000 shrunk to $ 10 billion, the sale of the building's meme was also born here.
Although both companies are plagued with ills, in 2012, this is already the bottom of the countless few cards of the Japanese electronics industry.
In April 2012, Kazuo Hirai took office as CEO of Sony, and in the same month announced the "One Sony" group-wide integration programme. At the end of the year, Renesas received a capital injection of 150 billion yen from the Industrial Innovation Corporation of Japan (INCJ), a quasi-government fund, and eight major customers, including Toyota, Nissan, and Canon, and announced the restructuring of its business.
Japan's semiconductor steps out of the doldrums have inexorably begun.
Post time: Jul-16-2023