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China Puts Wrinkle in Panasonic's Plans to Acquire Sanyo

Paul Lilly — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:53:33 -0600

Panasonic earlier in the week said it had begun a tender offer to take over rival Sanyo for an estimated $4.4 billion, which would create one of the world's largest electronics companies. But before that can happen, China is forcing Panasonic to sell off assets in Japan if its to approve the deal, the Financial Times reports.

The landmark ruling, which is based on anti-trust laws introduced in August of last year, has some concerned over the growing power of Beijing's competition authorities. Those who study competition law say the Chinese demands go further than those of the European Union and make international companies take greater notice of China when considering acquisitions.

Should the deal go through, Sanyo is expected to become Panasonic's subsidiary by mid-December, or a year after the two companies first announced the potential takeover.

Disney to Cram Movies onto SD Cards, Does Anyone Care?

Paul Lilly — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:35:45 -0500

We've seen some third-party USB makers toy with adding movies to USB sticks -- PNY being the first by adding Ghostbusters to a 2GB USB thumb drive -- and now Disney is looking to do the same thing, only with microSD cards.

According to news site TGDaily, Panasonic and Disney have inked a deal to distribute Disney movies on microSD cards, the first of which will be the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy this November. Looking longer term, Disney plans to release future titles on DVD and microSD at the same time.

Buyers will be able to view the movies on car navigation systems, mobile phones, and other portable media players with a microSD card slot, as well as some existing Panasonic TV sets that come with card readers already built in.

There are a couple of caveats, however. First, the card/movie bundles will only be available in Japan, at least initially. And secondly, the $53 price tag and included copy protection may scare off some potential customers.

Image Credit: cutiegadget.com

Century Announces Netbook Stand with Built-in DVD Drive

Paul Lilly — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:22:06 -0500

Last month, Asus shipped its first ever Eee PC netbook to integrate a Super-Multi optical disc drive, a trend which still hasn't caught on full-force. The Eee PC notwithstanding, if you must have a DVD drive with your optical-less netbook, one solution is to buy an external drive, but Century may have a better idea. The company plans to release a netbook stand with a built-in Panasonic DVD drive.

The stand/DVD drive measures 260 x 190 x 19mm and weighs 52g. It supports DVD±R/+RW (8x), DVD±R DL/-RW (6x), DVD-RAM (5x) and CD-R/-RW (24x), and comes with two USB 2.0 ports for good measure. Also included is a small 4cm cooling fan. And according to a rough translation of Century's product page, the stand also looks to incorporate a 2.5-inch bay for a SATA-based HDD or SDD.

Century's multi-functional stand will be available in Japan starting this Friday for $100, CrunchGear reports.

Image Credit: Century

Sony and Partners Announce New Blu-ray Licensing Firm, Player Pricing to Drop by Mid-Year

Paul Lilly — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:51:39 -0600

Despite winning the high-definition format war, Blu-ray adoption appears to be at a standoff with most consumers. Not everyone is willing to pay the relatively high prices associated with Blu-ray players, and that decision has been aided by the prominence of streaming media (a la Netflix) and upconverting standard DVD players. And it looks like consumers were right to wait.

Panasonic, Philips, and Sony have jointly announced plans to create a single licensing firm for Blu-ray patents, which should help drive prices down across the board. The new license is expected to cover all the essential Blu-ray patents to be overseen by an un-named licensing company in the U.S and run by Gerald Rosenthal, former head of intellectual property at IBM.

"By establishing a new licensing entity that offers a single license for Blu-ray Disc products at attractive rates, I am confident that it will foster the growth of the Blu-ray Disc marekt and serve the interest of all companies participating in this market, be it as licensee or licensor," Rosenthal said.

As it stands today, licensing Blu-ray requires talking to each of the three partner companies, but under the new plan, the group estimates the cost of a license to be "at least 40 percent lower than the current cumulative royalty rate." How much of that ends up being passed on to consumers remains to be seen, though we won't have to wait long to find out. The new plan is expected to be introduced by the middle of the year.

Image Credit: Sony

Panasonic in Talks to Buy Sanyo, Would Become Japan's Top Electronics Firm

Paul Lilly — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:24:17 -0600

Should Japanese electronics maker Panasonic Corp. manage to purchase a controlling stake in its smaller rival Sanyo Electric, Panasonic, who is already the world's largest plasma TV maker, could become Japan's biggest electronics firm as well. For that to happen, the company would have to come to an agreement with Goldman Sachs, Daiwa Securities SMBC, and Sumitomo Misui Banking Corp, all of whom are major shareholders in Sanyo.

The acquisition would put Panasonic ahead of the pack in the global market for rechargeable batteries, a market that is expected to see significant growth amid increased sales in portable electronics and hybrid vehicles.

"This appears to be the kind of deal where you add one and one and get three, instead of two," said Masayoshi Okamoto, head of trading at Jujiya Securities. "Their battery operations would truly be world-class."

Sanyo is currently the world's largest supplier of lithium-ion batteries, ahead of both Sony and Panasonic. The company can also boast being the seventh largest solar cell producer world-wide, another increasingly popular market sector that would benefit Panasonic should the acquisition come to fruition.

Image Credit: Panasonic

Panasonic Not Completely Sold on OLED TVs

Paul Lilly — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:03:35 -0500

There's been a bit of hype as of late concerning OLED technology, leading to a cautious optimism in the consumer electronics industry. Back in June, Plexitronics, with funding provided by the U.S. Display Consortium, announced a breakthrough in OLED manufacturing that could lead to low cost OLED displays, and just one month later Matsushita cranked the hype machine by saying it had set a goal of selling 40-inch OLED displays by 2011. Could we be on the verge of an OLED revolution?

Not everyone is as optimisitc, including Panasonic, who casted a ray of reality on the situation during the opening day of Ceatec 2008. Panasonic AVC Networks president Toshihiro Sakamoto squashed that idea that we might see OLED televisions in sizes of 30 inches or more anytime soon, saying th technology is not suitable for mass manufacturing. Earlier this year at CES, Sakamoto said that because "you won't be able to beat the cost and price performance of LCD and plasma for a long time," we likely won't see OLED start to grow as a market until 2015, but now feels even that estimate might be overly optimistic. The biggest irony here is that Panasonic is a brand name of Matsushita's!

Is Sakamoto's pessimism warranted, or will we see affordable 30-inch+ OLED displays before 2015?

Image Credit: Toshiba and Matsushita

Panasonic Gets Tough with Intel Atom

Chris Moody — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:34:25 -0500

ntel’s new Atom mobile processor has been adopted by Panasonic which has incorporated it into their new UMPC the Toughbook CF-U1. The Atom Z520 with it’s power sipping 1.33GHz processor is living with it's new friends a Solid State Drive, WIndows OS, and 1024MB of DDR2 RAM, in the ultra mobile rugged U1 with it’s magnesium alloy chassis, spill-dust resistant, sealed, all weather enclosure. It is sure to be a hit with anyone that likes it rough. The backlit QWERTY keyboard and a 5.6" WSVGA sunlight-viewable touch screen, makes it usable in almost any lighting conditions. It sounds like just the thing, I need to replace my poor laptop that I beat to death and keep resurrecting.

According to eWeek.com it is expected to go on sale in August with a starting price of $2,499.

Intel® Atom™ Processor Z520 1.33 GHz
XP Professional or Vista available
1024MB SDRAM (DDR2) standard
16GB solid state removable drive (32 GB optional)
5.6" widescreen Display with1024 x 600 sunlight-readable LCD
External video support
Intel® GMA500 integrated video controller max. 256MB (DVMT) VRAM
Analog Devices AD1883 complaint audio chipset
Integrated speaker, headphones jack, microphone jack and keyboard
SD card slot
USB 2.0
Intel® WiFi Link 5100 a/b/g/draft-n w/optional integrated 3G mobile broadband
Bluetooth®
Twin hot-swappable lithium ion battery pack
Battery operation: 9 hours with a charge time of 7 hours off, 10 hours on
Dimensions are 2.2" x 7.2" x 5.9" and weighs 2.3 lbs (including strap and both batteries)

Blu-ray Makes Giant Strides with 6X Media and $145 Player

Pulkit Chandna — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:20:37 -0500

The Blu-ray scene is lightning up and these latest developments prove that:

Panasonic’s 6x Blu-ray Media: Panasonic has unveiled the first ever 6x Blu-ray disc media. It breezes at a data transfer speed of 27MB/sec making it 30 % brisker than 16x DVDs and four times as fast as 48x CDs. But it will only be in September that the 6x Blu-ray becomes widely available in Japan and, hopefully, soon after that in other parts of the world. Panasonic’s 16x Blu-ray disc has two variants, one with a capacity of 25GB and the other with 50GB space.

Pioneer’s $145 Blu-ray player: The days of the exorbitantly priced PS3 being the cheapest Blu-ray player are all but history. Blu-ray player prices are falling and Pioneer has pioneered a major price drop, albeit in China. The manufacturer has more than halved the price of its BDC-SO2BKZ in China. One year ago, the player debuted in China at an asking price of $300, which has now been reduced to $145. It is only a matter of time when other manufacturers follow suit and when that happens Blu-ray players will become absolutely irresistible.

Image Credit: Cnet