NEC Essay

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NEC,  formally  known  in  Japan  as  Nippon  Denki Kabushiki Gaisha, is a multinational company, head achieve that  goal it provides a variety of electronics products  and services to include personal computers and peripherals, computer storage, networking equipment and services, and semiconductors. It also manufactures and sells consumer  goods such as refrigerators, air conditioners, microwave ovens, and washers. In the year ending March 2008, it announced  that its revenues totaled $46.172 billion and its profits totaled $227 million. According to iSuppli Applied Marketing Intelligence, NEC Semiconductors ranked number 13 in the world with 2.1 percent world market share.

The company  is organized  into  three  major  sections:  IT  Solutions,  Network  Solutions,  and  Electronic Devices. IT Solutions provides both computer hardware  and software as well as services. Network Solutions designs and implements  network  systems to  include  mobile  and  wireless systems. Electronic Devices provides semiconductors, displays, and other electronic equipment.

NEC (an abbreviation  for Nippon  Electric Company) is a very old company. It came into existence in 1898 and was initially a joint partnership with the American  Western  Electric Company. NEC was the first Japanese company formed  with foreign capital; it made  and maintained  telephone  equipment,  first phones and switches, and then switchboards.  While NEC  provided  equipment   for  domestic  consumption, it also made equipment  for export,  starting  in 1904, sending equipment to China and then to Korea. The company did not expand in a smooth fashion but rather in fits and starts in direct response to the Japanese government’s timetable for providing telephone service to the islands. When the government decided upon  expansion,  NEC expanded  as well. Whenever the  government  called a temporary  halt  to  installing services, NEC had to pause as well. It was during these pauses that NEC began the practice of importing electric appliances for sale in Japan.

Starting in the mid-1920s, NEC began developing a radio communications business, first broadcasting with imported U.S. equipment in 1925. NEC expanded into developing radio transmitters that  were sold in both Japan and China. NEC also developed a method for transmitting photographs by radio, first accomplishing this in 1928.

As was the case with many industries,  NEC was taken over by the government  during World  War II and was run directly by the Army. The NEC factories were  severely damaged  during  U.S. bombing  raids and were not able to reopen until 1946. As the 1950s opened,  NEC began  developments  in several areas commencing with research, development, and manufacture of transistors.  The company also made radio broadcasting equipment for export, began developing computers (a transistorized model appeared in 1959), and underwater  communications cable.

NEC appeared  in the United  States and Switzerland. In 1978 the first NEC factory in the United States opened.  In the  1980s, NEC entered  semiconductor chip production,  personal  computers  (entering  this market in 1982) while continuing to manufacture telephone systems, and also made consumer  goods such as videocassette  recorders,  televisions, and printers. In this period, NEC was also heavily engaged in the design, development, and manufacture  of supercomputers.  It was this last area that  not only brought  a great deal of favorable attention,  but also unfavorable notice, namely from the U.S. government.

In  1997  NEC  was cited  by the  U.S. Commerce Department for attempting  to dump supercomputers on the U.S. market.  The dumping  was to be accomplished  by underbidding  U.S. supercomputer manufacturer Cray on a contract for the American National Center  for Atmospheric  Research.  NEC had  bid  to provide  four  32-processor  SX-4 supercomputers  in May 1996 for $35 million. Finally, in February 2001, NEC announced  a distributorship arrangement with Cray for NEC’s SX-Series supercomputers, the same machines that had been at the center of the suit four years before. NEC granted Cray exclusive rights to distribute the SX supercomputers in North America. Further nonexclusive rights for sales in Europe were also granted to Cray. The entire agreement was predicated on the dumping fines levied on NEC to be dropped.

NEC supercomputer development  has continued to  make  substantial  gains. NEC created  the  Earth Simulator  (ES), designed  to perform  global climate modeling.  It was at the  time  (2002–04)  the  fastest computer in the world. In May 2008 NEC announced that  it had been awarded a contract  to build a new version for the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth  Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). NEC is expanding into other business areas as well. Also in May 2008, it announced  that it was going to work with Nissan to produce lithium ion batteries for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. The plan calls for an investment  of $115 million with the stated goal of producing 65,000 batteries a year by 2011.

In common  with its rival Fujitsu, as well as some other  Japanese companies,  NEC has  been  plagued with accounting  difficulties and accused of fraud. In 2006 the  company  was forced to admit  that  as the result  of an internal  investigation  it had discovered that one of its subsidiary companies (NEC Engineering) had recorded nonexistent  business deals and had done so for four years.

Bibliography:     

  1. Martin Fransman,  Visions of Innovation: The Firm and Japan (Oxford University Press, 1999);
  2. NEC, www.nec.com (cited March 2009);
  3. Yoshitaka Suzuki, NEC Corporation, 1899–1999 (NEC Corporation, 2002).

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