Sony's purchases of Taiwan-made electronic products to exceed US$10 B. in 2010
Sony is going to raise its budget on outsourced electronic products, especially Play Station 3 and LCD TVs, made by Taiwanese contract suppliers to over US$10 billion, accounting for around 30% of the total, this year, indicating that Taiwan has become the Japanese firm's largest production arm in the world, according to Sony Taiwan's newly installed chairman Naoki Aramaki.
Aramaki stressed that Sony has increasingly farmed out production of own-branded LCD TVs to Taiwanese suppliers since last year, and the procurement of the products is estimated to equal that of Play Station 3 TV game consoles this year. Presently, Taiwanese electronic product manufacturers such as Hon Hai Group, Wistron Corp. and Compel Electronics Inc. supply the products to the brand.
In addition to TV game consoles and LCD TVs, Sony has also procured notebook PCs, digital cameras, display panels for TVs and LSI (large-scale integration) from Taiwanese companies, including Quanta Computer Inc., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd., United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) and Winbond Electronics Corp.
Aramaki stressed that Taiwanese makers of semiconductor products are notable for their excellent production capability and dedication to production upgrades, making them an ideal production arm in the world. At present, all of Sony's needed LSI for game consoles is supplied by UMC and Winbond.
He added that Sony, to adapt itself to the quickly changing market, has taken a series of strategies to optimize organization operation and farm out production to overseas contract suppliers to enhance production efficiency. Therefore, Taiwanese suppliers versed in ODM (original design manufacturing) are key to success of the brand's strategies, he mentioned.
