Panasonic to take record $10 billion annual loss
Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 4:27PM 
Bad news for Panasonic as reports from Reuters and PCWorld state that Panasonic has fallen victim to the flagging TV business which has also put rivals Sony and Sharp in the red. Panasonic expects to suffer a 10 billion annual loss, the report states.
The emergence of multifunctional SmartTVs as well as the surge in popularity of Korean rivals like Samsung and LG have put pressure on traditional leaders in the TV space. Sony, Sharp and Panasonic are expected to lose a total of 17 billion this year. Pansonic's 772 billion (US$9.7 billion) loss is the largest ever from a Japanese company.
What hit Panasonic hard was it's gamble on plasma HDTV technology, which proved to be more expensive and eventually less popular than the LCD LED sets.
At a press briefing in Tokyo on Friday, Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo apologized for the unprecedented loss. "I feel the responsibility for the huge amount," he said.
Panasonic is cutting production and restructuring in order to bouce back from this huge loss.
Sources: Reuters via 43 Rumors
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