Sanyo
Encyclopedia
is a major electronics company and member of the Fortune 500
Fortune 500
The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500 U.S. closely held and public corporations as ranked by their gross revenue after adjustments made by Fortune to exclude the impact of excise taxes companies collect. The list includes publicly and...

 whose headquarters is located in Moriguchi
Moriguchi, Osaka
is a city located in Osaka Prefecture, Japan which serves as a satellite town to Osaka.As of 2010, the city has an estimated population of 146,524 and the density of 11,510 persons per km²...

, Osaka prefecture
Osaka Prefecture
is a prefecture located in the Kansai region on Honshū, the main island of Japan. The capital is the city of Osaka. It is the center of Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto area.- History :...

, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. Sanyo targets the middle of the market and has over 230 Subsidiaries and Affiliates.

On December 21, 2009, Panasonic completed a 400 billion yen ($4.5 billion) acquisition of a 50.2% stake in Sanyo, making Sanyo a subsidiary of Panasonic.
In July 2010, Panasonic announced that they would acquire the remaining shares of Sanyo. Sanyo Electric is also responsible for the construction of the Solar Ark
Solar Ark
The Solar Ark is one of the most famous solar buildings . It is an ark-shaped solar photovoltaic power generation facility which offers activities to cultivate a better appreciation of solar power generation, and thereby benefitting both ecology and science...

.

Corporate culture

Sanyo utilizes an extensive socialization process for new employees, so that they will be acclimatized to Sanyo's corporate culture. New employees take a five-month course during which they eat together and share company-provided sleeping accommodation. They learn everything from basic job requirements to company expectations for personal grooming
Personal grooming
Personal grooming is the art of cleaning, grooming, and maintaining parts of the body. It is a species-typical behavior that is controlled by neural circuits in the brain.- In humans :...

 and the appropriate way in which to address their coworkers and superiors.

History

Sanyo was founded when Toshio Iue (井植 歳男 Iue Toshio, 1902–1969), the brother-in-law of Konosuke Matsushita
Konosuke Matsushita
was a Japanese industrialist, the founder of Panasonic, a company based in the suburb of Kadoma , Osaka in Japan. For many Japanese, he is known as "the god of management"...

 and also a former Matsushita employee, was lent an unused Matsushita plant in 1947 and used it to make bicycle generator lamps. Sanyo was incorporated in 1950; in 1952 it made Japan's first plastic
Plastic
A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...

 radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 and in 1954 Japan's first pulsator-type washing machine
Washing machine
A washing machine is a machine designed to wash laundry, such as clothing, towels and sheets...

. The company's name means three oceans in Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

, referring to the founder's ambition to sell their products worldwide, across the Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

, Pacific
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 and Indian
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

 oceans.

In 1984 Sanyo introduced the MBC-550
MBC-550
The MBC-550 was a small and inexpensive personal computer in "pizza-box" style, featuring an Intel 8088 microprocessor and running a version of MS-DOS. It was the lowest-cost of the early IBM PC compatibles and was produced by Sanyo....

 PC, the lowest-cost IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...

 personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

 available at the time, but lack of full compatibility drove Sanyo from the market and no follow-on models were released.

Technologically Sanyo has had good ties with Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

, supporting the Betamax
Betamax
Betamax was a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional wide, U-matic format...

 video format from invention until the mid 1980s (the best selling video recorder in the UK in 1983 was the Sanyo VTC5000), and later being an early adopter of the highly successful Video8 camcorder format. More recently, though, Sanyo decided against supporting Sony's format, the Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...

, and instead gave its backing to Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...

's HD DVD
HD DVD
HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format...

. This was ultimately unsuccessful, however, as Sony's Blu-ray triumphed.

In North America, Sanyo manufactures CDMA cellular phones exclusively for Sprint-Nextel corporation's Sprint PCS brand in the United States, and for Bell Mobility in Canada.

The 2004 Chūetsu earthquake
2004 Chuetsu earthquake
The occurred at 5:56 p.m. on Saturday, October 23, 2004 . The Japan Meteorological Agency has named it the Heisei 16 Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Earthquake or The Mid Niigata Prefecture Earthquake of 2004...

 severely damaged Sanyo's semiconductor plant and as a result Sanyo recorded a huge financial loss for that year. The 2005 fiscal year financial results saw a 205 billion yen net income loss. The same year the company announced a restructuring plan called the Sanyo Evolution Project, launching a new corporate vision to make the corporation into an environmental company, plowing investment into strong products like rechargeable batteries
Rechargeable battery
A rechargeable battery or storage battery is a group of one or more electrochemical cells. They are known as secondary cells because their electrochemical reactions are electrically reversible. Rechargeable batteries come in many different shapes and sizes, ranging anything from a button cell to...

, solar photovoltaics
Photovoltaics
Photovoltaics is a method of generating electrical power by converting solar radiation into direct current electricity using semiconductors that exhibit the photovoltaic effect. Photovoltaic power generation employs solar panels composed of a number of solar cells containing a photovoltaic material...

, air conditioning
Air conditioning
An air conditioner is a home appliance, system, or mechanism designed to dehumidify and extract heat from an area. The cooling is done using a simple refrigeration cycle...

, hybrid car batteries and key consumer electronics such as the Xacti
Xacti
Xacti is a brand of Sanyo hybrid digital camera and camcorder. They use a distinct pistol-shaped format with most controls operated by the thumb and able to shoot both video and picture simultaneously...

 camera, projectors and mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

s.

Sanyo posted signs of recovery after the announcement of positive operating income of 2.6 billion yen. Sanyo remains the world number one producer of rechargeable batteries. Recent product innovations in this area include the Eneloop Low self-discharge NiMH battery
Low self-discharge NiMH battery
The low self-discharge nickel-metal hydride battery was introduced in November 2005. These batteries were developed by Sanyo, who called them "eneloop". Subsequently, other manufacturers also offered LSD NiMH....

, a "hybrid" rechargeable NiMH (Nickel-metal hydride battery) which, unlike typical NiMH cells, can be used from-the-package without an initial recharge cycle and retain a charge significantly longer than batteries using standard NiMH battery design. The Eneloop line competes against similar products such as Rayovac
Rayovac
Rayovac is a brand of batteries owned by Spectrum Brands of Madison, Wisconsin, United States.- History :...

's "Hybrid Rechargeable" line.

In December 2005 Sanyo had their new Super Sharp Technology patented.

In January 2006 Sanyo received a massive capital injection from Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational bulge bracket investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients...

, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
is a Japanese bank based in Yurakucho, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is a member of the Sumitomo Group and Mitsui Group. As of the year 2009, SMBC was the second largest bank in Japan in terms of assets.-History:...

 and Daiwa Securities which resulted in five members of the banks represented joining the nine-person Board of Directors.

On 24 November 2006, Sanyo announced heavy losses and job cuts.

Tomoyo Nonaka, a former NHK
NHK
NHK is Japan's national public broadcasting organization. NHK, which has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, is a publicly owned corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee....

 anchorwoman who was appointed Chairman of the company, stepped down in March 2007. The President, Toshimasa Iue, also stepped down in April of that year; Seiichiro Sano was appointed to head the company effective April 2007.
In October 2007, Sanyo cancelled a 110 billion yen ($942 million) sale of its semiconducter business, blaming the global credit crisis for the decision and stating that after exploring its other options, it had decided to keep the business and develop it as part of its portfolio.

On April 1, 2008, they merged their cell phone division with Kyocera
Kyocera
is a multinational manufacturer based in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. The company has diversified its founding technology in ceramic materials through internal development as well as strategic mergers and acquisitions...

.

On November 2, 2008, Sanyo and Panasonic
Panasonic
Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...

 announced that they have agreed on the main points of a proposed buyout that would make Sanyo a subsidiary of Panasonic and a formal announcement of the acquisition was made on Sanyo's web site on December 19, 2008. They became a subsidiary of Panasonic on December 21, 2009.

On July 15, 2010 Sanyo agreed to sell its semiconductor operations to ON Semiconductor
ON Semiconductor
ON Semiconductor , is a semiconductors supplier company. Products include power and signal management, logic, discrete and custom devices for automotive, communications, computing, consumer, industrial, LED lighting, medical, military/aerospace and power applications...

 for $366 million to be completed before the end of 2010.

On July 29. 2010 Panasonic reached an agreement to acquire the remaining shares of Panasonic Electric Works and Sanyo shares for $9.4 billion.

By April 2012, parent company Panasonic plans to terminate the Sanyo brand, however it will remain on some of the products where the Sanyo brand still holds value to consumers.

Solar cells and plants

The Sanyo HIT (Heterojunction
Heterojunction
A heterojunction is the interface that occurs between two layers or regions of dissimilar crystalline semiconductors. These semiconducting materials have unequal band gaps as opposed to a homojunction...

 with Intrinsic Thin layer) solar cell is composed of a mono thin crystalline silicon wafer surrounded by ultra-thin amorphous silicon
Amorphous silicon
Amorphous silicon is the non-crystalline allotropic form of silicon. It can be deposited in thin films at low temperatures onto a variety of substrates, offering some unique capabilities for a variety of electronics.-Description:...

 layers.

Sanyo Energy opened its solar module assembly plants in Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 and in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 in 2004, and in 2006 it produced solar modules worth $213 million. In 2007, Sanyo completed a new unit at its solar module plant in Hungary that was to triple its annual capacity to 720,000 units in 2008.

Plans to expand production were based on rising demands for Sanyo Hungary products, whose leading markets are Germany, Italy, Spain and the Scandinavian countries. The plant at Dorog
Dorog
Ethnic groups :*Magyars — 95.3%*Germans — 4.2%*Other — 0.5%Religions :*Roman Catholic — 57.4%*Calvinist — 8.9%*Lutheran — 0.8%*Other Christian — 2%*Atheist — 19.1%*No answer, unknown — 11.8%-Traffic and transport:...

, outside Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

, will be Sanyo Electric's largest facility producing solar modules in the entire world.

In late September 2008, Sanyo Electric Company, Ltd. announced its decision to build a manufacturing plant for solar ingot
Ingot
An ingot is a material, usually metal, that is cast into a shape suitable for further processing. Non-metallic and semiconductor materials prepared in bulk form may also be referred to as ingots, particularly when cast by mold based methods.-Uses:...

s and wafers (the building blocks for silicon solar cells) in Inagi, Japan. The plant will begin operating in October 2009 and will reach its full production capacity of 70 megawatts (MW) of solar wafers per year by April 2010. Sanyo and Nippon Oil
Nippon Oil
The , or NOC or Shin-Nisseki is a Japanese petroleum company. Its businesses include the exploration, importation, and refining of crude oil; the manufacture and sale of petroleum products, including fuels and lubricants; and other energy-related activities.Its products are sold under the brand...

 have decided to launch a joint company for the production and sale of thin-film solar panels, to be named Sanyo Eneos Solar Co., Ltd. The new joint company will start production and sales at an initial scale of 80MW and gradually increase its production capacity. For this joint project, Sanyo will draw on its solar cell technologies, based on the technology acquired through the development of the HIT Solar Cell.

Rechargeable Batteries

Sanyo has pioneered the production of nickel cadmium batteries in 1964, nickel metal hydride batteries
Nickel metal hydride battery
A nickel–metal hydride cell, abbreviated NiMH, is a type of rechargeable battery similar to the nickel–cadmium cell. The NiMH battery uses a hydrogen-absorbing alloy for the negative electrode instead of cadmium. As in NiCd cells, the positive electrode is nickel oxyhydroxide...

 in 1990, lithium Ion batteries in 1994, and lithium Polymer batteries in 1999. In 2000, it acquired Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...

's Nickel Metal Hydride battery business, including the Takasaki factory.

Electric vehicle batteries

Sanyo Electric Co Ltd. supplies nickel metal hydride batteries (NiMH batteries) to Honda Motor Co. Ltd., Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a German automobile manufacturer and is the original and biggest-selling marque of the Volkswagen Group, which now also owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Škoda marques and the truck manufacturer Scania.Volkswagen means "people's car" in German, where it is...

. Sanyo is developing NiMH batteries with PSA Peugeot Citroen
PSA Peugeot Citroën
PSA Peugeot Citroën is a French manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles sold under the Peugeot and Citroën marques. Headquartered in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, PSA is the second largest automaker based in Europe and the number eight in the world.-History:In December 1974 Peugeot S.A....

 jointly. The Company is also in partnership to develop lithium-ion batteries for hybrid electric vehicles with the Volkswagen group.
SANYO lithium-ion batteries for Plug-in HEV will also be housed in SUZUKI's fleet vehicles.

Sanyo Electric plans to raise monthly production of NiMH batteries for hybrid vehicles from the current 1 million units to up to 2.5 million by the end of fiscal 2005.

Sponsorship

Sanyo was the major sponsor of the Penrith Panthers
Penrith Panthers
The Penrith Panthers are an Australian professional rugby league football team based in the western Sydney suburb of Penrith. They compete in the National Rugby League premiership, the top rugby league football competition in Australasia. For the 2012 NRL season they will be coached by Ivan...

 Rugby League
Rugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...

 team in the National Rugby League
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL's main competition, called the Telstra Premiership , is contested by sixteen teams, fifteen of which are based in Australia with one based in New Zealand...

 (Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

) from 1998 to 2011. It is the longest sponsorship of any team in Australian Rugby League history. In football, sponsor of Club Atlético River Plate
Club Atlético River Plate
Club Atlético River Plate is an Argentine sports club based in the Nuñez neighborhood of Buenos Aires. It is best known for its professional football team, which currently competes in Nacional B, the second tier of Argentine football....

 from 1992 to 1995 and Coritiba Foot Ball Club
Coritiba Foot Ball Club
Coritiba Foot Ball Club, commonly known as Coritiba, is a Brazilian football team from Curitiba, Paraná. It's the state's oldest football team and the best classified in the CBF and FIFA classifications. Coritiba has been champion in Paraná State for 35 times, more times than the sum of all the...

 from 1995 to 1999.

See also

  • List of digital camera brands
  • Sanyo mobile phones
    Sanyo mobile phones
    Kyocera Communications, Inc. is a manufacturer of mobile telephones for CMDA networks and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Kyocera Corporation that was formed in February 2000 when Kyocera acquired QUALCOMM's San Diego, California-based terrestial handset division. Upon the purchase of QUALCOMM's...

  • Sanyo Wild Knights
    Sanyo Wild Knights
    Panasonic Wild Knights is a Japanese rugby union team based in Ōta city, Gunma prefecture which plays in the Top League. Inspired by Tony Brown at fly half , it dominated the league in the fifth season and was the first team to be unbeaten throughout a Top League season.All-Japan Champions:...

    , a Japanese rugby union team owned by Sanyo.
  • MildDisc
    MildDisc
    Sanyo Electric's subsidiary Sanyo Mavic Media has developed MildDisc which went to market in December 2003. The disc is based on polylactic acid which is produced from corn. It was planned to replace completely plastic compact discs, because it is recyclable and environmentally friendly...

  • Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
    Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
    , or MHI, is a Japanese company. It is one of the core companies of Mitsubishi Group.-History:In 1870 Yataro Iwasaki, the founder of Mitsubishi took a lease of Government-owned Nagasaki Shipyard. He named it Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works, and started the shipbuilding business on a full scale...

  • Panasonic EV Energy Co
    Panasonic EV Energy Co
    Primearth EV Energy is the supplier of the nickel metal-hydride battery packs for Toyota’s hybrids, as well as for Honda hybrids. The company also provides the NiMH prismatic battery modules for the General Motors 2-mode hybrids...


External links

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