Panasonic, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer electronics, home appliances and telecommunication products, recently announced that it had developed an aggressive marketing plan to expand its market share for electronic and electrical equipment in the Middle East and Africa.
The region currently has a total market turnover of seven billion dollars for consumer electronics, of which about 15 to 20 percent is commanded by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) alone. With the development of this strategy, Panasonic aims to expand considerably upon its current 22 percent market share of the UAE market, in addition to making significant inroads into the regional markets of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Middle East and Africa.
The company which markets products across the audio-visual communication networks, home appliances, industrial equipment and components and devices segments has recorded a turnover of one billion dollars in the last financial year, which ended March 2002, in the Middle East and Africa region. In addition, it has forecast an estimated 10 percent growth during the current financial year across all segments in the region.
As part of its new focus, Panasonic, which is a subsidiary of the international Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Ltd. (MEI), has laid significant emphasis on localization in order to respond more quickly to market needs and generate faster time to market. In keeping with this strategy, it has established Panasonic Marketing Middle East FZE as the regional marketing headquarters of MEI for operations in the Middle East and African countries.
“The new regional headquarters at the Jebel Ali Free Zone will help us to control the product flow and availability in the region in addition to giving us better opportunities to work with our regional agents by providing them support functions like customer service, marketing and promotion collaboration, information systems and logistics,” said Masato Tomita, managing director for Panasonic Marketing Middle East FZE.
“Current market trends prove that the Middle East is one of the fastest growing regions in terms of electronic and telecommunication products. The extensive and rapid growth of the Information Technology (IT) industry in the region has also encouraged us to reorganize our management strategies and product profiles to move towards greater integration and a digital future,” he added.
Panasonic has recently restructured its product focus towards digital networking in order to leverage the increasing use of the Internet and the current trend towards converging technologies. Digital networking moves away from the earlier focus on stand alone products based on analogue devices to develop a family of digitally compatible products that allow for the production of scalable, integrated systems. Panasonic is working towards digitalization and integration of audio-visual systems with IT infrastructures
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., best known for its Panasonic, National and Technics brands, is a worldwide leader in the development and manufacture of electronics products for a wide range of consumer, business and industrial needs. Based in Osaka, Japan, the company posted consolidated sales of $61.45 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2001.
Panasonic Gulf FZE (PGF) is MEI’s first subsidiary company in the Middle East, followed by Panasonic Marketing Middle East (PMM), which is the regional marketing headquarters of MEI for operations in the Middle East and African countries. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
