I would suggest that a title change will say it all:
What happened to Japan's electrical giants?
Hitachi's boss says it in the article
"Digital technology changed everything," he says.
"In the television industry it means that just one chip is
now needed to produce a large and high quality TV picture.
So now everybody can do it."
What they did was electrical engineering - but apart from washing machines, everything consumer is on a chip. Hitachi has seen this and run, all the others should be following suit, or trading on their names as brands for Android phones.
A vacuum cleaner on a chip? A microwave oven on a chip? A large LCD screen on a chip?
I don't really get what you mean by "everything consumer is on a chip". Making LCD screens is quite hardware-y and I thought quite difficult to do well too.
Ok, stopping arguing gleefully with all-comers and going to bed depressed about the sorry state of humankind. And willing to vote for the death penalty should it come round again soon.
Let's go back to the 80's. Electronic products had to be done with lots of components. There were chips, but they did much less than what they do today.
Also, more mechanical parts (think VCR, Camcorder, etc)
So the real work was doing more with less components and good quality.
Today, with better chip technology and 'solidization' of technologies. (magnetic tape to flash memory, crts to lcds) today you can realistically have an LCD tv with only a couple of chips (apart from the power source, lcd panel and some other components like speakers and maybe the tuning part). There's nothing much to tweak. There's software, but that's increasingly commoditized as well.
And the japanese apparently can't innovate software-wise.
And the japanese apparently can't innovate software-wise.
I am going to be nit-picky, and go for
... Large Japanese conglomerates with contractural and social commitments to current and past employees, huge management layers ... apparently can't innovate software-wise.
Ruby probably counts as a plus in the innovation side.
(Look I know it was nitpicky and you did mean that anyway,
but this is HN, it is late, so I apologise )
Of course, Hitachi actually had a semiconductor design and manufacturing subsidiary, and their H8 microcontrollers and SuperH CPUs were quite popular at one point. I think they've sold all that off now though.
Well, the chips dont make the money, the software makes the money. Its kind of like why car manufacturers made more money than the car parts suppliers...
Comments
I would suggest that a title change will say it all:
What happened to Japan's electrical giants?
Hitachi's boss says it in the article
What they did was electrical engineering - but apart from washing machines, everything consumer is on a chip. Hitachi has seen this and run, all the others should be following suit, or trading on their names as brands for Android phones.A vacuum cleaner on a chip? A microwave oven on a chip? A large LCD screen on a chip?
I don't really get what you mean by "everything consumer is on a chip". Making LCD screens is quite hardware-y and I thought quite difficult to do well too.
Sometimes the world is too much.
I went off to look up magnetrons (you know, microwave is just a chip with a block of iron and wire)
Hit this on wikipedia:
The reference:http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pHXdUbiRiA8C&pg=PA87&...
Ok, stopping arguing gleefully with all-comers and going to bed depressed about the sorry state of humankind. And willing to vote for the death penalty should it come round again soon.
More or less this
Let's go back to the 80's. Electronic products had to be done with lots of components. There were chips, but they did much less than what they do today.
Also, more mechanical parts (think VCR, Camcorder, etc)
So the real work was doing more with less components and good quality.
Today, with better chip technology and 'solidization' of technologies. (magnetic tape to flash memory, crts to lcds) today you can realistically have an LCD tv with only a couple of chips (apart from the power source, lcd panel and some other components like speakers and maybe the tuning part). There's nothing much to tweak. There's software, but that's increasingly commoditized as well.
And the japanese apparently can't innovate software-wise.
And the japanese apparently can't innovate software-wise.
I am going to be nit-picky, and go for
... Large Japanese conglomerates with contractural and social commitments to current and past employees, huge management layers ... apparently can't innovate software-wise.
Ruby probably counts as a plus in the innovation side.
(Look I know it was nitpicky and you did mean that anyway, but this is HN, it is late, so I apologise )
Of course, Hitachi actually had a semiconductor design and manufacturing subsidiary, and their H8 microcontrollers and SuperH CPUs were quite popular at one point. I think they've sold all that off now though.
Well, the chips dont make the money, the software makes the money. Its kind of like why car manufacturers made more money than the car parts suppliers...