About Electronics

The Wall Street Journal: Pioneer Corp. said it will receive 2.5 billion yen ($25.8 / €19.7 million ) of fresh capital from business partner Honda Motor Co. in the first of a series of fundraising steps planned by the electronics maker to finance its overhaul.

Pioneer, a maker of car navigation systems and electronics products, said it plans to issue new shares to Honda by the end of June and use the money from the Tokyo-based auto maker to develop new car electronics products.

With losses mounting, Pioneer has decided to exit the flat-panel television business and concentrate on electronics for the auto industry.

Pioneer is also preparing to apply for a government cash injection under newly approved measures in Japan’s economic stimulus program.

Under a medium-term business plan also announced Tuesday, Pioneer said it will need to raise around 40 billion yen, but details for other financing deals aren’t set yet.

In the latest deal with Honda, the auto maker will pay 170 yen for each of the 14.7 million new Pioneer shares to be issued. Honda will have a 6.54% stake in Pioneer, becoming the second largest shareholder after Sharp Corp.

Sharp’s stake in the electronics maker will decline to 13.35% from 14.28% after the new share issue. Pioneer’s reform plans over the next three fiscal years through March 2012 include closing nine of 30 group companies undertaking production in Japan and overseas and shrinking capacity at six others.

It is also laying off 5,800 full-time employees and 4,000 contract-based workers from this year. At the end of December 2008, Pioneer had 36,925 full-time employees. It will also reduce the total number of directors and executive officers this year to 19 from 25.

Pioneer expects a restructuring charge of 47 billion yen in this fiscal year ending March 2010, but it expects its reform measures to reduce fixed costs by 50 billion yen in this fiscal year and a further 85 billion yen in the following year.

For the fiscal year ended March 31, Pioneer forecast a net loss of 129 billion yen, slightly narrower than a 130 billion yen loss estimated in mid-February. It will report full-year results May 13. The company also projected a net loss of 83 billion yen for this fiscal year. It expects to return to the black in the fiscal year ending March 2011 with a net profit of eight billion yen.

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Tech On: Honda Motor Co. Ltd. added a new service to its “internavi Premium Club,” an information delivery service for vehicles, on July 4, 2007. When a major road is opened up, map information is updated within a few minutes by, for example, a mobile phone and used for path search.

The new model of Fit, which will be released in fall 2007, will be the first vehicle enabled to use the new service.

The new service delivers only the difference between the original road information and new road information. Thus, through wireless applications such as a mobile phone, new maps can be used a few minutes after a road is opened to traffic.

For other features, internavi Premium Club started a service to send an information about the driver’s safety to e-mail addresses preregistered through PCs and so forth when a huge earthquake occurs. Though a separate registration is required, all the club members are qualified for the service.

When an earthquake with a seismic intensity of five lower or above occurs within 30 km around the vehicle or on the route to the destination, a warning image is displayed on the monitor of the car navigation system. And the system sends information that the vehicle is running near the area struck by the earthquake to the preregistered e-mail addresses.

After that, by manually operating a screen to send a message about the safety, it is possible to send an information about the driver’s safety to the registered e-mail addresses.
 

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Akihabara News: Honda car drivers in Japan will be able to receive in real time the exact weather at their present location or at their destination. If you don’t think weather conditions at your current location are useful on a GPS (you could always put your hand outside the window for a real exact report), you may find interesting to know the roads or districts that are flooded, or cut-off by the snow.

Perhaps more interesting is that Honda will also offer a real SNS (Social Networking Service) which allows subscribers to provide some information about a precise location. For example, if you’ve had a bad experience in a restaurant, you can mark the place on your GPS and let the other users know.

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