Report: Panasonic, Sony and Sharp mulling to sell buildings worth $3 billion

Panasonic Corp, Japan's struggling maker of Viera brand TVs, owns more than 10 million square metres of office and factory space, dormitories for its workers and sports facilities for its rugby, baseball and women's athletics teams.

Panasonic eyes Rs. 650 crore from IT business in FY13

Electronics major Panasonic India is aiming to clock Rs. 650 crore in revenues for the full year ended March 2013 from its IT products division.

Panasonic, which caters to mostly SMEs and large enterprises for its IT products, on Wednesday also launched 'ToughPad' and Windows 8-powered rugged ultrabook, targetted at government, utilities and manufacturing sectors in the country.
"Panasonic's system sales division has been growing at 40 percent and we are looking at closing the year (with revenue) at Rs. 650 crore. Globally, our Toughbook makes a strong contribution to revenues and we expect it will be a similar case in India too," Panasonic India MD System Sales Division Toru Hasegawa told reporters here.
The 10.1-inch 3G Android tablet PC, ToughPad, is designed to cater to the needs of healthcare, pharmaceutical and construction companies as well as the defence sector with its ruggedness and security features. It is priced at Rs. 75,000 onwards.
The Ultrabook, with its flip over design, can be used as a notebook and a tablet PC. It is priced Rs. 1.3 lakh onwards.
The company already has another business rugged laptop SX2 in the Indian market priced at Rs. 1.25 lakh and will soon launch another semi rugged laptop (convertible to tablet PC).
"The IT products revenue from India is one percent of the global IT products. We are confident of tripling this by 2015," Panasonic Cotp Director IT Products Business Unit Hide Harada said.
A rugged computer is a device specifically designed to reliably operate in harsh usage environments and conditions like strong vibrations, extreme temperatures and wet or dusty conditions.
Typical end-user environments for rugged laptops, tablet PCs and PDAs are field sales, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, transportation/distribution and the military.

 

LG, Samsung SDI, Philips and three others fined 1.47 billion euro for EU price fixing

The European Commission imposed the biggest antitrust penalty in its history on Wednesday, fining six firms including Philips, LG Electronics and Panasonic a total of 1.47 billion euros for running two cartels for nearly a decade.The Commission said executives from the European and Asian companies met until six years ago to fix prices and divide up markets for TV and computer monitor cathode-ray tubes, technology now mostly made obsolete by flat screens.
Between 1996 and 2006 they met in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and in Asia for "green meetings", so-called because they often ended in a round of golf.
"These cartels for cathode-ray tubes are 'textbook cartels': they feature all the worst kinds of anti-competitive behaviour that are strictly forbidden to companies doing business in Europe," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in a statement.
The EU antitrust regulator imposed the biggest penalties on Philips for its role in the price fixing and carving up of markets. The Dutch-based firm was fined 313.4 million euros and faces a further penalty through a joint venture.
However, Chief Executive Frans van Houten said the group would challenge what he called the disproportionate and unjustified penalty.
LG Electronics of South Korea must pay 295.6 million euros plus its share of a joint venture penalty, followed by Panasonic Corp which was fined 157.5 million.
The Japanese firm said it might also make a legal challenge. "Panasonic believes the EU decision is factually and legally erroneous and will carefully review the decision and consider our options for appeal to the European courts," it said.
The Commission also fined Samsung SDI 150.8 million euros, Toshiba Corp. 28 million euros, and French company Technicolor 38.6 million euros.
A joint venture between Philips and LG Electronics was penalised 391.9 million euros while two Panasonic joint ventures were also sanctioned.
Almunia said the violations were especially harmful for consumers, as cathode-ray tubes accounted for 50 to 70 percent of the price of a screen.
Cathode-ray tubes have largely been replaced by more advanced display technologies such as liquid-crystal display (LCD), plasma display and organic light-emitting diodes.
Philips sold off the business which committed the infringement in 2001 but said it would make a provision of 509 million euros in the fourth quarter for the fine.
ING analyst Fabian Smeets told ANP-Reuters that the sanction was significant, but had been expected. Philips' shares were down 0.82 percent to 19.93 euros at late afternoon, erasing earlier gains after news of the fines.
Technicolor said the fine, which will be booked as an exceptional item in its second-half accounts, would not affect its 2012 earnings and free cash flow targets.
Until now, the Commission's biggest antitrust penalty had been a 1.38 billion euro fine imposed on participants in a car glass cartel in 2008.
The Commission's sanctions followed a total fine of 128.74 million euros levied last year against four producers of the glass used in cathode-ray tubes.
Chunghwa Picture Tubes, Samsung Electronics, LG Display and three other LCD companies were penalised a total 648 million euros two years ago for taking part in a cartel.

 

Panasonic India unveils Toughbook tablet, ultrabook for enterprise users

Panasonic India has expanded its Toughbook range of rugged computing devices with two new products - the Panasonic Toughpad FZ-A1 tablet and CF-AX2 ultrabook.The Toughbook range of devices are designed to work under harsh conditions, where your typical computing devices may fail. The devices are capable of surviving drops of up to 4 feet and are designed to be weather/ water proof, making them ideal for outdoor use. According to Panasonic, this has made the Toughbook range of devices a favourite with a wide range of enterprise and military users across the globe.

The first device introduced today, is the Toughpad FZ-A1 tablet targetted at healthcare, pharmaceutical and construction companies. The tablet features a dual-core processor with a dedicated security processor core (FIPS 140-2 Level 2 compliant), that makes it ideal for use in secure environments. The FZ-A1 comes with a 10.1-inch anti-glare capacitive multi-touch display with digitizer and up to 500cd/m brightness with anti-reflection film, which is ideal for outdoor viewing.
The Panasonic Toughbook FZ-A1 comes with 1GB RAM, 16GB storage (expandable by another 32GB), Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, 3G/ LTE connectivity, HDMI, Micro-USB, 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, 2-megapixel front camera. The tablet is drop resistant from a height of 120cm (MIL-STD 810G compliant) and water/ dust protected (IP65 compliant). It comes with Android 4.0 and 10 hours battery life (user-replaceable battery). The tablet weight 0.97 kg and is now available for Rs. 75,000 across India.

Panasonic also unveiled the CF-AX2 ultrabook targeted at enterprise users on-the-go. The CF-AX2 is tablet/ notebook hybrid running Windows 8, featuring a 11.6-inches touchscreen display with 10 contact points sporting a resolution of 1366x768 pixels. The devices comes with Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD storage, USB 3.0 ports, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile connectivity, HDMI, SD card reader and 720p webcam. The Panasonic CF-AX2 will be available in the country starting February 2013 for a price of Rs. 1,30,000.