Sharp Corp is cutting 380 jobs — all temporary workers — at its Japanese plants and shuttering some assembly lines making flat panels to cope with the global slowdown, the electronics maker said yesterday.
The news follows word earlier this week that rival Sony Corp plans to slash 8,000 jobs around the world, or about 5 percent of its global work force, and an additional 8,000 temporary jobs — all in electronics.
Sharp’s job cuts account for about a third of the Osaka-based company’s temporary manufacturing employees in Japan, the company said. They don’t affect Sharp’s 54,800-strong global work force, or the additional 6,100 people at group companies, including joint ventures.
Still, the announcement — coming amid looming fears about job losses in a nation that has long upheld the tradition of lifetime employment — underlines the serious damage Japanese exporters are taking from a worldwide downturn.
Japanese consumer spending is also lagging, and the government has been releasing a slew of pessimistic readings on the economy.
Sharp, known for Aquos brand TVs, said it needs to adjust production of liquid crystal displays, used in TVs, personal computers and mobile phones.
Some assembly lines in two plants, in Mie Prefecture and Nara Prefecture, central Japan, which make small- and medium-size displays, will be closed, it said.
Production will instead be centered at its newer plants making bigger panels. Such adjustment efforts will start next month, Sharp said.
Sharp joins AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) in scaling back production as the global recession hurts demand and panel prices slump. AU Optronics, Taiwan’s largest maker of LCD panels, said Thursday it would delay the construction of a factory as clients such as Sony Corp cut profit forecasts and shed jobs.
Sharp will close one line each at the two factories and completely halt all panel production at these units by the end of next September Yoshiaki Ibuchi, an executive vice president, told reporters in Osaka.
“One of the purposes of this reorganization is to strengthen our business of small and mid-sized LCD panels used for personal computers and other products,” Ibuchi said.
Sharp competes with South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co and Panasonic Corp of Japan in the global LCD TV market. Panasonic has said it’s changing business plans to respond to declining global demand, and such efforts are also likely to include some job cuts.
The television maker has “made no change” to its LCD television-shipment forecast for the 12 months ending March 31, said Miyuki Nakayama, a Tokyo-based spokeswoman. Sharp expects to sell 11 million LCD TVs in the fiscal year.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Wednesday said that a new chip manufacturing technology called “A16” is to enter production in the second half of 2026, setting up a showdown with longtime rival Intel over who can make the fastest chips. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of advanced computing chips and a key supplier to Nvidia and Apple, announced the news at a conference in Santa Clara, California, where TSMC executives said that makers of artificial intelligence (AI) chips will likely be the first adopters of the technology rather than a smartphone maker. Analysts said that the technologies announced on
A total of 41 US military personnel were stationed in Taiwan as of December last year, a US congressional report said on Friday last week ahead of Tuesday’s passage of an aid package that included US$8 billion for Taiwan. The Congressional Research Service in a report titled Taiwan Defense Issues for Congress said that according to the US Department of Defense’s Defense Manpower Data Center, 41 US military personnel were assigned for duty in Taiwan. Although the normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979 included a vow to withdraw a military presence from Taiwan, “observers have indicated
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
CALL FOR DIALOGUE: The president-elect urged Beijing to engage with Taiwan’s ‘democratically elected and legitimate government’ to promote peace President-elect William Lai (賴清德) yesterday named the new heads of security and cross-strait affairs to take office after his inauguration on May 20, including National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to be the new defense minister and former Taichung mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) as minister of foreign affairs. While Koo is to head the Ministry of National Defense and presidential aide Lin is to take over as minister of foreign affairs, Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) would be retained as the nation’s intelligence chief, continuing to serve as director-general of the National Security Bureau, Lai told a news conference in Taipei. Koo,