Japan's Sharp Corp. raising production in RI

Japan's Sharp Corp. raising production in RI

By Hendarsyah Tarmizi

TOKYO (JP): Japan's Sharp Corporation is preparing to open and
build more factories in Indonesia to tap its growing market for
consumer electronics.

Corporate Senior Executive Vice President Yutaka Wada said
here last week that the company would open a semi-conductor
factory in Karawang, West Java, later this month, and that the
corporation was building other factories to increase production.

He said this was part of the company's strategy to strengthen
its foothold in Indonesia.

"Indonesia, with its vast growing population, is really
promising for our electronic products," he told Indonesian
journalists visiting Sharp's High Technology Hall in Makuhari on
the outskirts of Tokyo.

Wada said that opening new production facilities in Indonesia
and other Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN)
countries was the only way that the company could compete with
other electronics giants, especially when the region adopts its
free trade agreement in 2003.

He said that Sharp, which has factories in most Asian
countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the
--Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, could only compete
with other major electronics manufacturers if it offered lower
prices.

"It means that our production should be more efficient. By
having production bases in all ASEAN member countries, we will be
able to cut operational costs significantly," he said.

Wada acknowledged that Sharp's production capacity in
Indonesia was much lower than its capacity in Malaysia and China,
but he said the company was going to do more in Indonesia.

Sharp's Indonesian operations are controlled by its subsidiary
PT Sharp Yasonta Indonesia. It established its first TV and
refrigerator plant in Indonesia in 1994. Last year the company
invested Rp 30 billion (US$12.8 million) to increase production
in Indonesia.

Its annual production of color television sets was, for
example, increased to 350,000 units from 220,000 units, while its
annual production of refrigerators was increased to 300,000 units
from 260,000.

Sharp also opened a new factory last year to produce 2,000
washing machines a month.

Ryoichi Tominaga, the general manager for regional marketing,
said that Sharp's new semiconductor factory in West Java was
expected to support the company's TV factories in Indonesia and
other countries of Southeast Asia.

He said the company's production bases in Asia were designed
so that their activities would complement each other.

"Semiconductors to be produced in Indonesia will, for example,
be also sold to other Asian production units. The Indonesian unit
will, on the other hand, also use components produced by other
Asian subsidiaries to produce color TV sets, refrigerators or
washing machines," he added.

New

Tominaga said that Sharp's presence in Indonesia was
relatively new, considering that the company had operated
factories in Malaysia for nearly 24 years.

In Indonesia, Sharp has three subsidiaries: PT Sharp Yasonta
Indonesia for manufacturing, PT Sharp Yasonta Antarnusa for sales
and PT Sharp Semiconductor for manufacturing semiconductors.

Sharp Yasonta Indonesia's annual sales are expected to rise 30
percent this year to Rp 235 billion (approximately US$100
million) from Rp 180.5 billion in 1995.

Sharp is more active in Malaysia. There it has five
manufacturing units and one sales unit.

In Malaysia, most of its output is exported. But in Indonesia
nearly 90 percent of its output is sold to the domestic market.

Established by Tokuji Hayakawa in 1912 as a pencil producer,
Sharp Corporation began manufacturing and marketing crystal radio
sets in 1925.

In 1953, the company started developing and mass producing
television sets to coincide with NHK's early TV broadcasts in
Japan.

Sharp has become one of the world's electronics giants,
controlling 14 percent of the Japanese TV market, according to
Minoru Fujiwara, Sharp's director for international marketing.

He said Panasonic lead the Japanese TV market, with a 24
percent market share. Toshiba is second, with a 16 percent market
share, and Sharp is third with a 14 percent market share.

Hayakawa said that Sharp was the largest producer of TV sets
with Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD). It has captured around 90
percent of the world market for LCD TV sets.

"Sharp is the only LCD producer in the world. Sony and other
producers which use LCDs for their television sets buy the LCDs
from us," he said.

The price of LCD TVs is around six times that of conventional
television sets but in Japan they are becoming more popular
despite the price.

He said that 10.4-inch LCD display TVs cost around US$1,200
each, compared to $200 for conventional television sets of the
same size.

Sharp is also renowned for its success in developing personal
information tools.

Sharp recently introduced the new ZR-3000 "Zaurus" personal
information instrument, which offers powerful PC connectivity,
software and communication applications.

Mainichi Shimbun recently launched a news service using 305-
gram "Zaurus" personal organizers. The news is fed manually to
the instrument via a PC using a modem connected to a telephone
line.

Other new products include the PC-W100 series of multimedia
color Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) notebook computers, the
world's first notebook PCs equipped with wide-screen 1,024 x 600-
dot LCD displays.