Japan’s Hottest New Export Market: Japan – Businessweek

At the Shibaura Chuo auto showroom in Tokyo, the Nissan March subcompact has all the signs of Japanese quality—it’s fuel-efficient, sturdy, and handles well. Except the March is made in Thailand, not Japan. “People see the sale of cars made abroad as a sign of the times, as globalization,” says salesman Shiro Kakinuma. “When the new March came out here there were some articles questioning the quality of a car made in a developing country. Not anymore.”

When Nissan Motor [NSANY] began to import foreign-made vehicles in 2010, that paved the way for Japan’s biggest companies, including cosmetics seller Shiseido and electronics maker Toshiba, to follow suit. “Nissan’s decision was epochal,” says Masato Sase, an auto industry analyst at Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting. “Before then, there was a tacit assumption that cars sold in Japan would be made in Japan.”

According to government data, shipments home from overseas plants have more than doubled in a decade to a record ¥8.4 trillion ($107.4 billion) in 2011, including a 31 percent jump in the past two years. A stronger yen, an aging workforce, and improved worker skills overseas have eroded a century-old tenet that Japan only buys what’s made in Japan. It’s not just consumer brands: Industrial goods such as electrical machinery and chemicals top the list of Japan-bound Japanese products made abroad.

via Japan’s Hottest New Export Market: Japan – Businessweek.

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After the Floods, a Sea of Disk Drive Shortages – Businessweek

Compared to the scores of companies in the disk drive industry with operations in Thailand, Seagate Technology STX is lucky. Only 180 of its 15,400 workers are among the 13 million people whose homes have been swamped. The floodwaters that have engulfed much of the industrial heartland north of Bangkok for the past six weeks have spared both of Seagate’s sprawling Thai factories. In fact, the weather at Seagate’s plant in Teparuk, which is outside the flood zone, has been uncharacteristically dry, says Thailand country manager Jeffrey D. Nygaard.

Still, Seagate Chief Executive Officer Stephen J. Luczo is forecasting difficult times for the drive industry. Each of the hundreds of thousands of drives Seagate’s Thai factories ship every day contain parts from 130 or so suppliers, many still under three feet of water. The projections by some Wall Street analysts that production will be back to pre-flood levels by summer is nonsense, Luczo believes. “This is going to take a lot longer than people are assuming, until the end of 2012 at least,” he says. “And by then, demand will have gone up.”

via After the Floods, a Sea of Disk Drive Shortages – Businessweek.

Strange Random Flood Quote:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat.
And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”
– William Shakespeare (English Dramatist, Playwright and Poet, 1564-1616)

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• Therese Poletti’s Tech Tales: Thailand floods could shake PC industry (marketwatch.com)
• Thailand Hard Disk Drive Production Down for 56 Days Say Forecasts (prweb.com)
• Acer, Samsung: Drive Shortages From Thai Floods To Hurt PC Sales, Boost Prices (forbes.com)
• Dell’s Profit Improves as Sales Miss Expectations (nytimes.com)
• Thai floods flush storage channel clean (go.theregister.com)
• Now Barracuda bitten by Thai disk drought disaster (go.theregister.com)
• IDC: Thailand Floods Will Hurt Overall PC Shipments (pcworld.com)