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Slashdot Asks: Can Panasonic Reinvent Itself? 49

Posted by msmash from the water-taps-running-dry dept.
Panasonic's market value has remained flat at approximately $25 billion over the past decade while rivals Hitachi, Sony and NEC have increased their valuations sixfold during the same period. The Osaka-based conglomerate announced a restructuring plan in May 2025 to eliminate 10,000 positions and streamline operations across its six operating companies and hundreds of product lines. The company generates $57 billion in annual revenue and maintains dominant positions in several markets. Financial Times reports: Within Panasonic's six operating companies and hundreds of product lines are industrial technology gems. The company supplies 70 per cent of the world's in-flight entertainment systems, its facial recognition technology is being used to measure brain health, and its EV battery plants are among the world's most efficient, according to auto industry insiders. Panasonic chief said in January that AI-driven hardware and software solutions would constitute 30% of revenues by 2035, compared to approximately 10% currently. But Goldman Sachs analyst Ryo Harada wrote recently that investors are seeking a growth strategy beyond the announced reforms.
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Slashdot Asks: Can Panasonic Reinvent Itself? More

Slashdot Asks: Can Panasonic Reinvent Itself?

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  • If you ask me to name one product made by Sony or NEC off the top of my head, I don't have an answer. I know Panasonic makes noise/beard hair trimmers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Do you ever have an answer?

    • Reallly? C'mon man, you've heard of the Sony Playstation / PS5.
    • NEC mostly makes heavy equipment in the Asian regions these days. Like the electrical systems for earthmovers and stuff like that. They gave up on consumer electronics by the early 2000s. I had a absolutely amazing NEC flat panel from the early days of 1080p displays kicking around that only just now died. Honestly if I want to tear it apart and replace the capacitors I probably could keep it going but that was probably Overkill. It was $400 in the early 2000s though.

      I mean Sony that's the PlayStation r

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Thanks for the humor, though the moderators disagree or can't see the joke.

      But more seriously, I'm typing on an NEC, though the main display is a Sharp... Can't think of any Panasonic products I own now though there was a time when I sold them (among other brands)... Mostly I think Panasonic lost its vision when the founder died. Sad, not funny.

      • I have owned or used several pieces of Panasonic video equipment back in the day. A compact VHS-C consumer camcorder and some full-sized pro S-VHS cameras and VCRs and editing equipment. I also owned a Panasonic Toughbook laptop (one of the W series semi-rugged ones) and a Panasonic Lumix pont-and-shoot camera.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      As mentioned in the blurb, Panasonic makes the in-flight entertainment systems that go into the majority of all airplanes. I was surprised when an acquaintance of mine told me he worked for panasonic, but he indeed built those systems. So while they sell consumer products, they sell commercial/industrial products too. I don't know how much those in flight entertainment systems cost, but I can't imagine they're cheap.

  • My plug for the non-pluggable (Score:3)

    by kackle ( 910159 ) on Friday September 05, 2025 @11:29AM (#65640978)
    I've found that they have great batteries for the repairs of consumer-grade products...better than the cheapo, no-brand stuff on Amazon, et. al.

    • They make the best microwaves. I bought one of their medium industrial units for home. All stainless steel, dual magnetron, 1800W. It was pricey, about the cost (inflation adjusted) of a domestic microwave in the mid 1990s. It has zero weird modes, nothing smart, just time, power and some programmable presets for sequences. It will also run at a duty cycle of 100% indefinitely as far as I can tell.

      It's a beast.

      I always figured when I refurbished my kitchen that I'd get two ovens. Completely reversed on that

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        Ha, I, too, have thought of getting a basic commercial microwave oven when this one died--it seems a good idea. But I've been able to get the required repair parts so far. At 45 years old, its keypad somehow still looks and works as new.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by twosat ( 1414337 )

        We have a Panasonic microwave oven and a few dozen Panasonic Eneloop rechargeable AAA and AA batteries. Panasonic New Zealand did a memorable TV commercial some years ago that is still occasionally seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Panasonic was a quality brand (Score:4, Informative)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Friday September 05, 2025 @11:48AM (#65641024)

    We have a 7 segment AC powered alarm clock by Panasonic from about 1980. It still works, but the labels on the buttons have worn off, and we have to make sure we know which button to push to set clock time vs alarm time. It's the oldest still working vintage technology in the house. There are some Panasonic stereo components in the attic from about the same time, but those need to go to recycling.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      My mom still uses two 7-segment alarm clocks made by Sony that she bought around 1977. They are conspicuous in their oldness but clearly the highest quality thing she ever bought.

    • If you find a product still made by Panasonic generally I find the brand to still be high quality, it just seems that in the consumer space they just don't offer as many products as the Japanese electronics heydey of the 80's and 90's. My first cassette boombox was a Panasonic and it was great.

      I also want to say that they are on the few companies that still offers some microwave models not made by Midea.

      They are still big in the professional space, ProAV and broadcast you see them alot.

      • Back in the 1980s we found Panasonic products to be consistently high quality and when we shopped for some product-type seeing one with "Panasonic" on it usually made the sale. They seemed to fade from the market in the 1990s.

        • Yeah somebody earlier mentioned NEC and I think it's a similar situation in that these companies focus more on commercial products.

          In my realm for proAV projectors they've always been my preferred brand but that's not something the average consumer is going to encounter.

    • I have a casette player from 1970ish somewhere (early in the decade) that I no longer use - but it still works ;)
  • Sony and Microsoft are both trying to figure out how to stop making hardware while holding on to the platforms. Basically they want to be steam.

    It's not good for consumers since it means that they want to shift the cost of the hardware onto the consumer the way Nintendo has been able to.

    It's a little messed up because they still want that 30% cut versus the roughly 8% cut that 3DO was taking back in the day.

    But that's what Microsoft is up to with those Xbox handhelds. And I could see Panasonic a

    • In the same way it made the previous 3DO?

      • Yeah that's the trick. The 3DO couldn't get consumers to pony up for expensive hardware.

        Capcom just came out and said they were having a tough time moving enough copies of monster Hunter wilds because the cost of the PS5 is so high they have hit the limit of the market.

        People want these big AAA games but you need a platform to play them on. And you need to do at least 5 or 10 million sales to support games of that size.

        That creates a super rough attachment rate when there's only 60 million ps5s o

  • "Flat" is not "bad" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday September 05, 2025 @12:04PM (#65641054)

    Persistent growth always means eventual collapse.

  • Investors are what's wrong with the world (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PantyChewer ( 557598 ) on Friday September 05, 2025 @12:05PM (#65641056)
    They are a company that is healthy and doing well. Why does everything have to grow all the time? The stock market is the biggest problem out there. Chasing quarterly profits and growth all the time causes all kinds of problems and the same people bitch and complain about giant companies that own too much and need to be broken up.. What exactly is wrong with being stable and making nearly $2b profit a year? Why does it always need to be more?
    • Not a cooperative society.

      That sounds good on paper because we get told as kids competition makes everything better.

      The trouble is competition gets you winners and losers. And the winners have a habit of taking their winnings and using it so that they have an advantage during the next competition.

      That's important because that's where you get a lot of if not most of your inflation, at least in a modern mechanized civilization with declining birth rates like ours.

      Basically you've got the winne

    • If the market and its value is expanding while your income remains stable it means you are losing market share. Your competitors are winning your customers or potential customers. That is not stability, it is stagnation, at best.

      • So which of the hundreds of product lines is the market expanding? Which ones is Panasonic losing market share in? Saying they are stagnating is the massive oversimplification that shareholders/analysts make to encourage layoffs and destroy a company. "But Goldman Sachs analyst Ryo Harada wrote recently that investors are seeking a growth strategy beyond the announced reforms." That means Goldman Sachs can go fuck off - they are simply trying to destroy the company and profit from it. A 'growth strategy'

  • Love their batteries. Used Durascells for long time now they start leaking years before the date code. I was taking everything using these batts apart inspecting for leakage 3 tomes a year. Then noticed that anything I get that comes with AA or AAA batteries never leak. Just looking at the construction shows marked differences. I get the Panasonic platinum power batteries from Home Depot almost as cheap as Coppertops from Costco. :)

  • The Panasonic KP-77 electric pencil sharpener might be the best automatic pencil sharpener ever made. Mine still works from the late 80s. Panasonic will never need to sell me another one. Maybe its hard to grow your business when your stuff works forever.

  • This is what happens when you quit your core.

    Panasonic receivers? Gone.

    TV's? Gone, and now maybe making a comeback

    Projectors? And I was a huge fanboy of their projetors.. Gone. Both home and pro, gone.

    Tough to make money through "services."

    Same with the "service economy"

    'way business should work is .... you make thing, sell thing, make money from it. Fix the thing the other guy sold, make money from it.

    Panasonic would need to start making things again to become relevant. And I don't see them doing it.

    M

    • They make superb displays and excellent digital stills and video cameras. An awful lot of the content you see on youtube, TV and even in the cinema is being made on Panasonic Lumix cameras.

      • Possibly the last thing they make we can buy.

        I do myself have an ancient Lumix and love it. Their marriage with Leica was an excellent idea.

        But they're going to need more than cameras. A return to consumer electronics would be nice. Their projectors really were superb.

        My music room music system is built around a 21 year old Panasonic digital receiver. 21 years of daily use, and I don't mean a couple of hours a day, I mean this thing does duty day and night, it only sleeps when I do.

        That's the Panasonic

  • I frankly don't miss Panasonic stuff. It was cheap and broke easily.

  • streamlining operations on an already hyper efficient company increases profit ~ for a while, till competitors catch up ~ but it does not introduce new products and services. aka: innovation.
  • And I think that's about it.

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