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Sharp Warns That It Might Collapse
angry tapir writes "Japan's Sharp, a major supplier of LCD displays to Apple and other manufacturers, has warned that it may not survive if it can't turn around its business. The Osaka-based manufacturer said there is "material doubt" about its ability to continue operating in its earnings report filed Thursday. Sharp added, however, that it still believes it can cut costs and secure enough credit to survive. Its IGZO technology for mobile displays is likely to be a key element of its business strategy."
Sell their LCD's to apple at a higher cost why should apple be the only one making a premium off the screens?
This would be an opportune time for Apple to buy Sharp, re-organize the beast then ramp up displays and other parts for its booming business. If Sharp collapses, Apple will be in trouble - guaranteed.
Sharp is probably suffering from the prices they agreed to with Apple. It can fun throwing your weight around but it has limits.
The 24-month chart is probably more informative than your 3-month chart. I realize it kind of spoils your intended narrative, though.
Like any stock, Apple's shares have seen significant corrections before - especially in the modern market.
#DeleteChrome
Coincidentally, we laughed at the store yesterday noticing that the only fuzzy displays were the Sharp ones in comparison to the others. Can they be so ignorant of their product quality issues?
Really, which LCD displays do they supply to Apple? LG and Samsung are major suppliers, I can't remember the last time I saw an LCD in an Apple product wasn't LG/Sharp.
Perhaps if Sharp actually was a major supplier they wouldn't be in quite so close to bankruptcy.
I guess you meant to say "LG/Samsung" in that second sentence, not LG/Sharp.
From what I've heard, the new iPad Mini uses Sharp screens.
the iPhone 5’s three known display suppliers - LG Display, Japan Display and Sharp Corp.
that's dull
Really, which LCD displays do they supply to Apple?
Apple tried to diversify their supply chain away from Samsung. Sharp are amongst those who made the retina displays for the iPhone 5 (and the mini Ipad)
This would be a really good time for Samsung to put the boot in. Interesting to see if they do anything.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Basically the only people not buying AAPL are people who lack any vision.
When I hear that said about a stock, I'm inclined to research shorting it.
My impression of Sharp may be anachronistic, I don't know if the company is still what it used to be, but I think of them as manufacturing really terrific products, particularly portable electronics (remember these?), but hardly selling them or anything at all outside of Japan. Even within Japan I guess their marketing wasn't so good. Sorta the anti-Apple - poor marketing, but great and often pretty open products.
The #3 television manufacturer in the world, Sony, announced on Friday it's cutting its medium-term TV sales goals in half.
Four days earlier, #5 Panasonic (Matsushita) announced it's cutting its flatscreen TV production in half.
Sharp is ranked #4. Apparently all three of the Japanese manufacturers bet too big on TVs and are getting trounced by Korean rivals Samsung (#1) and LG (#2).
And those who are taking a profit. AAPL generally follows the market but when it's bearish, it tends to go down slightly more than average.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Part of Sharp's problem's are twofold. Their investment in R&D accounts for a lot of their debt. And of course Japans overall problem with the Yen.
Flat Panel TVs have become pretty cheap and with all the added functions and reliability, everybody who wants one or more may already have them. I have a Sharp Aquos which has an estimated 60,000 hours of liftetime. It's great, by the way. At 8 hours per day, that's about 20 years of use. And, as I said, everyone who wants or needs one or more of these things already has them, there's not much of a market. I've seen prices for 50 +" Samsungs or Sharps for $1,200 - $1,500 at Costco. It seems that Sony has already given up on flat panels even though they are supposed to be pretty good, maybe the best. Not to advocate an illegal pricing structure, it does seem like the producers have to increase prices.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
I still feel like it is important to know for me. It gives an idea of the current shape of the market: "sharp is being eaten".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/11/05/sharp-statement-lost-in-translation/?mod=WSJBlog
Apple has easily 10 times that in cash on hand and a quarterly profit of 8 billion. If Apple wanted Sharp, the only thing blocking it would be japanese or american regulators. In reality a middle company like Foxconn or one of apples other suppliers would make a better fit.
That was the rumor, the only thing anyone has seen in a Mini, is a Samsung display. Which wasn't part of the Rumor.
Yeah, that was a typo, I meant to say Samsung/LG.
You won't find a Dell logo inside the Dell display either. What's your point?
Blank until
That isn't evidence. They are just repeating the rumor, much like the rumor for iPad mini, where Samsung was out, and Sharp was in.
But when they dissected a Mini, it had a Samsung screen. So much for rumors.
There is also one other problem. Sharp doesn't build IPS screens. LG and Samsung do (though Samsung calls it PLS).
Sharp is heavily invested ASV technology which is a VA offshoot with inferior viewing angles.
I have yet to see any evidence that Sharp screens are used in any of Apple products.
Yeah, like there's a Dell logo on that U2711 display panel, righty?
Perl Programmer for hire
There are very few large scale LCD manufacturers. Arguably the 2 biggest names are Sharp and Samsung, Apple are actively pushing away from Samsung and looking to Sharp so it would be very nasty for apple. The collapse of Sharp would have a big impact on who makes your tablet, smartphone and television screens in future and potentially the market prices of those devices as shortages or lack of competition will potentially affect prices.
Big Japanese mobile companies always take a long time to turn around if something happens. They all still don't understand why the iphone is successful since all the management level there was brought up in a time when NTT had a monopoly and the companies produced mobile phones nearly exclusively for NTT/docomo (imode), which in turn force fed the mobiles to the customers.
I liked Sharps products, learned programming on a MZ-80B. I always wanted to buy a zaurus, one of the first linux-based PDAs, but it was mainly sold/available inside Japan. When i lived in Japanlater, i bought a sharp netwalker T1 (only available in Japan).
The netwalker demonstrates all of Sharps shortcomings in a technically not so bad device:
-Target the Japanese market only from the beginning
-make no advertisements about the special features it has (e.g. standard usb host port, interesting pointing device layout)
-make a half-assed decision of using Ubuntu on it (for *two* devices they used the ARM port of Ubuntu)
-leave it unpolished, with easy to fix show-stopper bugs, trusting that the Japanese will always buy Sharp
your right, but stock dropping $100 after the release of a new phone is a little worrying.
So what happens next quarter when Apple has had yet another 27-40% growth spurt, fueled by a large number of new products recently released?
What happens if Apple has a shrink spurt instead?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
It's not about quality, it's about how many you can sell. Nobody wants a TV they can only watch in a dark room, except for a very small group of men. That makes the product rather... unmarketable.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Doesn't sharp current produce the LCD display found in the iPhone 5?
Because Samsung gave them the finger.
You can't solve financial problems by raising prices. You have charge prices similar to what others are charging or else you will just lose all your business. You have to look at what's driving your costs and figure out if you can reduce them enough to stay afloat, or if you need to be rethinking your business plan.
Apple doesn't buy large companies. And there's a good reason, Apple's management doesn't need to be worrying about restructuring and turning around a failing Flat-Panel display manufacturer. They've got enough to worry about just designing and selling their products.
But, Apple has been known to invest in companies in order to ramp up and modernize production. It's not too big a step to go from that to bailing out a company with loans. Though It would probably be smarter for them to give the money to a company that isn't on the verge of collapse to buy the facilities from Sharp. Less to worry about.
We can only hope.
As a happy owner of a Sharp Aquos TV, I really hope Sharp can survive.
In Japan, Sharp is the only brand of TVs with both Japanese and English menu settings.
My 3 year old Sharp TV even has an RS-232 port that I have connected to my HTPC and I use it to control most things from it: power on/off, change input, volume, etc. The TV even came with a manual describing the protocol, what else could I ask for?
I have checked their newer models and unfortunately they have removed this feature. I am hoping to find some similar control capability via the network port, with an open protocol, but haven't found anything yet (I welcome any hints!).
The only thing my Sharp TV doesn't do well is displaying the image properly when using nouveau, but since it works well when using the nvidia driver I'm not sure if its a buggy EDID implementation from Sharp or nouveau.
1. No, not nearly enough unless they want to spend pretty much all of it. Sharp is huge, and selling to a foreigner would require massive amount of extra funds to essentially bribe a lot of japanese legislature.
2. Sharp has problems with money flow due to current banking environment and crisis hitting its sales and profit margins hard, in addition to increasing competition. It's not really ready to collapse, that statement was most likely aimed at helping it secure low cost loans with governmental backing, as is the way of things in Japan.
3. Expertise in question simply doesn't exist. This is what Sony tried once, threw a LOT of resources at the problem and failed in a spectacular margin. Biggest problem is completely different corporate culture, japanese and american simply do not mix.
Many people nowadays think that money solves everything. It really doesn't. What money can do is support inefficiency until it runs out. But it won't fix the problem causing the drain.
Samsung is still producing apple displays, the small ipad one is samsung for example.
You want the return of early industrial age, when most people could barely afford to live on monotonous 14-16 hour a day factory work?
Are you insane?
I have fond memories of some really nice Sharp HiFi (Optonica) but despite being fairly ubiquitous in the market with a toe in pretty much all electronic/electric product areas, they did seem to shift from a 'High Street' brand to a parts supplier. As a result, they have dropped of most people's radar as a brand.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Just like say Japan did to the European colonies and Germany did to almost all of Europe?
There is indeed lingering resentment and the Japanese indeed did not apologize or pay damages unlike the Germans but to think this matters on a high level unless it is convenient (when either side needs to divert attention from internal problems) is childish.
The higher-ups have no morals, they are perfectly willing to deal with former enemies often before the last victims have stopped twitching. See McArthur and the rebuilding of Japan. Prosecuting Japanese war criminals? Far to inconvenient when massive contracts are to be won.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sharp's position is entirely determined by the choices they make or have made. If they make bad decisions, their business will suffer and if they make good ones their business will prosper.
There are external factors such as exchange rates that can hurt a business badly without it making any "wrong" choices.
...with the internets when I can read this article and appreciate the correct use of possessive in the form of its without the erroneous apostrophe.
Apple is more likely to buy Sharp and try to keep the entire supply chain in-house.
But a "Sharp Apple" could leave a bitter taste
Will this void the warranty of my Sharp EL-330A calculator (in black)?
D'oh
Because right now SHARP tv's are the best you can buy. They are better quality than Anyone else and honestly far larger than anyone else. Where else can you pick up an 80" LED backlight LCD for under $3500.00
LG is crap recently. their redesign has all plugs coming straight out the back.... DUH, no wall mounting unles you want a 3" gap.
Panasonic is still plagued with failed power supply boards.
Sony is overpriced rebranded LG.
Samsung sets are junk. Just like how their projectors are junk. Control protocols for samsung are random at best, and not reliable to even turn the sets on or off.
I really hope they can turn it around. They were suposed to have 120" sets out early 1st Q of 2013 and I have at least 15 clients wanting them for the board room instead of a projector and screen.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Nokia and other hailing companies should come out too!!
Perhaps they think they'll make it up on volume?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
OEMs go to the suppliers yearly, demanding a (often contractual) reduction in price by 1-2% ... whether the suppliers are able to supply the parts at the lower cost is irrelevant, and most will gladly bend over in fear of not loosing the next deal (which they'll likely also lose money on).
Actually what happens is that the lower tier suppliers price in future price reductions knowing that the OEMS will demand price reductions in future years. The suppliers aren't stupid so they price that in up front. Occasionally someone is dumb enough to not take this into account and they lose their a$$ on the job and aren't a factor the next time around. I'm a cost accountant and deal with this all the time. You pretty much have to assume between 1% and 5% give backs (amount depends on the customer) when pricing a part to a US auto supplier. I've even seen them demand retroactive discounts going back 3 years.
This really is more of a problem with the US auto makers and their bigger suppliers. Frankly the US auto makers tend to have a pretty dysfunctional relationship with their supply chain. They tend to prefer their suppliers to be right on the edge of bankruptcy if possible. The Japanese manufacturers don't tend to beat up their suppliers so much and tend to have much more of a partnership relationship. I've actually had a Japanese auto maker ask a company I worked with if they were making enough margin to be healthy. You really do not want to be a Tier 1 supplier to a US auto maker. Tier 3+ is fairly safe and there are profits to be had there.
worse for your electronics than owning a longhaired cat
My cat was acquitted on all charges in the case of bad drive vs Orangie Orangejuice
He didn't say Apple doesn't have the money, he said money doesn't automatically confer expertise.
It's not really ready to collapse, that statement was most likely aimed at helping it secure low cost loans with governmental backing, as is the way of things in Japan
Are you really sure that this way of things is exclusive to Japan?
Sorry to burst both your bubbles, but if you track a 2 year chart of the Nasdaq and in fact the Dow Jones composite too, and you overlay it on the AAPL chart, you see that AAPL for the past year have basically been broadly tracking the overall ups and down of the market itself ... and that actually has more to do with factors like central bank market interventions, currency and bond markets, inflation, happenings in Europe etc.
Nasdaq
Dow
So what happens next quarter when Apple has had yet another 27-40% growth spurt, fueled by a large number of new products recently released?
What happens if Apple has a shrink spurt instead?
Why don't you put your money where your mouth is and short AAPL?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
No, but it's not good to consume and not produce. It's got to come to an end eventually.
Not to mention the ozone also breaks down a lot of rubbers and softer plastics making them brittle. Granted, it's more of an annoyance when it comes to computers, but if you hold in your case fans with those rubber screw things you can expect that your fans will suddenly detach themselves from your case after a while.
Basically the only people not buying AAPL are people who lack any vision.
Well it all comes down to whether there are any people of vision left in Apple.
Not sure if you remember, but Apple's stock only really started to rise in 2004, when they started to get a name as a funky consumer electronics company, instead of that company that makes those Mac computers that artists and designers use.
Jobs did have a vision or two, which came at the right time in PC and Internet history. Personal mobile devices that did really amazing stuff. Do you think it would have worked if everyone didn't have a Windows PC to run iTunes on, or have WiFi and reasonable mobile broadband? You know what they say about "an idea whose time has come". How often, exactly, do you think that happens in the life of a company?
Steam is one such idea, and it has been milked for a long time, because there were no competitors. Now there are, in the various "app store" models emerging. Facebook has been even luckier, they're in a very hard to break monopoly position.
But, like Steam, Apple's great ideas have competition now. Now Apple is, once again, just like any other I.T. company. If you think there's another guy at Apple with the next New Idea Whose Time Has Come, let me know and I'll buy stock.
For now, however, chances are Apple is in a slow slide back to that place from whence they came - a company with a niche product that doesn't do very well against competition.
Sharp painted itself into a corner. The Board and Exec staff did it, and the shareholders have to suffer with it.
Happens all the time. So what!
Making bad choices in a volatile market will hurt... and may be fatal. To quote Queen: Another one bites the dust.