Kenwood 2005 Annual Report Download - page 9

Home Electronics
Business
The home electronics business is another of our longstanding operations
along with the wireless radio equipment business. Since our
commercialization of a high-class FM tuner using advanced high-
frequency technology and honored as the world’s best, Kenwood has
steadily expanded the business under the concept of “high fidelity” and
expanded its presence as an audio manufacturer around the world. At
the same time, the Company has produced many proprietary sound
technologies that significantly improve quality, and continued to offer
fresh, attractive sound entertainment for the market, at a time when
media technology shifted from analog to
digital. This concept has remained intact
even after drastic restructuring measures
were implemented in fiscal 2002 because
profitability of the business deteriorated
as the market matured and trends
changed.
The Company now focuses on the
development of digital amplifiers with
high fidelity and high power, the features meeting the needs of the digital
era, and products compatible with networks, which match with the
Company’s concept of providing sound entertainment in every living
scene. As part of this effort, the Company in May 2004 launched a hard-
disc audio system that can handle music distribution services offered by
Any Music Inc., in which the Company has a stake. This was followed by
the release of a network-based theater system, which reads music and
videos stored on a PC through wireless networks and reproduces them at
high quality.
Taking advantage of the penetration of
new digital media such as flash memories
and hard discs as a new business
opportunity, the Company launched a
portable flash memory audio product,
followed by a portable HDD audio
product that adopted a digital amplifier
for the first time in the industry, achieving
the highest fidelity in its class as well as proposing seamless “sound
entertainment” through connections with home audio and car electronics
products.
Kenwood will continuously strive to open up new grounds for “sound
entertainment” with higher fidelity and more satisfaction to customers, by
leveraging cutting-edge digital media and networking environment, while
focusing on its traditional high-fidelity reproduction.
Speaker System Business
The Company has been enhancing its audio operations while focusing on
high fidelity and increased its presence as an audio manufacturer. Despite
the widespread progress of digital media, speaker systems remain a sensitive
field as they rely on the physical phenomenon of air oscillation to convey
sound. The Company has accumulated extensive proprietary analog
technologies and relevant know-how through a painstaking process of trial
and error in its high fidelity design as well as development of new materials
for speaker system.
In April 2004, the Company created the Speaker System Division by
integrating the speaker operations of the Car Electronics Division and the
Home Electronics Division, aiming at offering attractive, value-added
products with high-fidelity sound reproduction based on the above-
mentioned technologies and know-how.
The Speaker System Division, as an important division
common to the Consumer Business Sector, is expected to
contribute to the Car Electronics and the Home Electronics
Divisions and establish a business centering on speaker
systems, through which it plays a part in further
enhancement of the audio
sector.
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Consumer Business Development Center
The Company conducts research and development for advanced
technologies on the cutting edge in anticipation of the full-scale arrival of the
fully digitized and networked society. In April 2004, the Company
established the Consumer Business Development Center, aiming to develop
new, competitive technologies and products that match our vision as well as
design platforms, in the consumer electronics field where technical
innovation is remarkable.
This new R&D organization is combining core technologies and
optimizing the use of resources through such efforts as commercialization of
an agent function that combines voice recognition and synthesis techniques
with dialogue control technology, and new functions that utilize digital and
network technologies. In addition, it is proactively developing basic
technologies common to every business, and carrying out advanced
development and strategic development, while devising common strategic
development themes for the entire company.
Furthermore, in April 2005, the Company created the Value Creation
Division (VCD), a new organization that organically operates across the three
businesses of car electronics, home electronics and communications
equipment businesses, with the objective of exerting Kenwood’s strength as
the only manufacturer that simultaneously operates in these businesses. By
blending AV technology, which has been nurtured over many years, with
cutting-edge digital, networking, wireless and multimedia technologies,
Kenwood plans to further advance the seamless integration of car
electronics, home and portable audios, and networking with personal
computers and the Internet, and will strive to open up new business avenues
that, as the best possible model for its “Mobile & Home Multimedia System”
business, will enable Kenwood to offer new added value to the market.
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Kenwood Corporation Annual Report 2005