After the “Lehman Shock” occurred in 2008, the Japanese automobile industry began facing several difficult situations. Domestic production, domestic sales and exports have been staying at lower levels compared with those before 2008. In addition to this, Japanese car makers have not yet developed effective strategies for introducing new products into emerging markets when compared with their counterparts in Europe (such as Volkswagen) or America (such as General Motors). Moreover, the lasting effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 have aggravated this situation.
In order to overcome such obstacles, this paper indicates three challenges that Japanese automobile makers need to meet. First, Japanese automobile makers must grapple with the development of next-generation vehicles. Second, they must clarify their business strategies for each segment of the automobile industry, from luxury automobiles to ones for the general public, while considering markets in both advanced and emerging countries. Third, when reconstructing their business strategies for markets in emerging countries, they should take into account the different tastes in automobiles in each country. Such customer preferences should also be considered in the domestic market as well.

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Many Japanese companies, such as electronics manufacturers, are confronted with difficult situations in emerging markets. This paper examines firstly what is the competitive edge for Japanese manufacturing companies. Japanese manufacturers excel at products and industries that require one or more of the following characteristics: (1) deep extraction of fundamental product and/or manufacturing technology; (2) integral-model product architecture; (3) flexibility-oriented manufacturing technology such as small lot production of variety models.
The above mentioned competitiveness of Japanese manufacturers stems from the problem solving capability which, in turn, are based on their strategic and organizational characteristics. Fundamentally, Japanese management systems can be explained in terms of two factors: an orientation toward long-term continuity, and low barriers between jobs. The HRM system, including in-house qualification system, which has been widely adopted by large Japanese companies since the high-growth period is also important, in that it has supported both of the fundamental characteristics of Japanese companies.
Long-term continuity and low barriers between jobs encourage the sharing of information by a broad array of employees and participatory management. These allow the accumulation of technologies and know-how within and between companies. The high level of problem-solving ability is built on the accumulation of technologies and know-how. The problem-solving capabilities that have been developed in this way are the sources of strengths (1) through (3) of Japanese companies.
By considering the competitiveness of Japanese manufactures and introducing the cases of two Japanese affiliated product developing center in China, this paper examines how they should compete with their rivals in emerging markets, especially Chinese rivals in Chinese market. The main segmentations for Japanese manufacturers should be the products with high quality and function, because higher costs and prices are compensation for the competitiveness. However, so-called volume-zone should be also the targets, in order to realize economy of scale.

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From the analysis of electronic industry in Japan, we found that the amounts of production and trade of electronic consumer appliances and industrial equipment including the mobile phones and computers have shrunk, and the amounts of electronic parts and devices have expanded. The realization of smaller, lighter and thinner parts and parts-materials with high function were implemented through collaborative technological and product development between parts-supply companies and parts-users companies. Though the parts-supply companies that supplied parts to foreign companies as well as Japanese companies got profits, the final products manufacturing companies could not get a profit from the business development of hightech products that they installed highly-functional parts and materials on. There is a dilemma because a company must get a profit to sustain a business and build an adequate business scheme to achieve it.
The global competitiveness of each industry is shown as an indicator of the aggregation of product data by each company. The total competitiveness of each company depends on the aggregation of product-based competitiveness of the product markets that the company supplies to. However, the statistics of the competitiveness of an industry in one country differs from the company statistics that include global activities. In a global era, we must check the statistics of global development of the companies to study the concerned industry. But, the statistics comes from the data of main divisions of each company that does business globally. Though the industrial statistics about one country is made by each country data, we can't sometimes grasp the outline of companies' behavior as a whole. It is a challenged agenda for the contemporary industry study.

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While China is now firmly established as one of the world's most important destinations for inward FDI, outward FDI by Chinese companies has also taken off spectacularly. Despite the challenging economic environment, Chinese overseas investment continued to grow since the happening of world financial crisis in 2008.
However, aggressive outward FDI from China raised various questions at both empirical and theoretical levels. Among them, industrial competitiveness of Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) is regarded as one of the core concerns which is traditionally paid special attention by the mainstream of MNEs literatures. The data used in the paper comes from the survey conducted in the past three years in four ASEAN countries. The concerns of the paper focus on how Chinese MNEs compete with the front runners—Japanese and Korean MNEs in ASEAN market and how they establish their industrial competitiveness. The paper aims at clarifying the current industrial competitiveness and the potentials of Chinese MNEs. The major factfindings in the paper are as follows. (1) Chinese MNEs in ASEAN market are just situated at the initial stage of overseas business path while their rivals, Japanese and Korean MNEs have marched to the matured stage. But this does not at all mean that Chinese MNEs have no chance to win. Actually Chinese MNEs engaged in some certain segments have shown relatively strong competitiveness at the very beginning. (2) Chinese MNEs engaged in different industries show different competitive advantages in ASEAN market. Electronics-related firms show stronger competitiveness while automobile-related firms are relatively weak at present. Furthermore, (3) Chinese MNEs engaged in electronics segment show very high potentials to conquer their rivals in the near future.

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This paper aims to analyze the international competitiveness of Japanese, Korean and Chinese automobile industries compared to those in Western countries. Analyzing in detail the publicly available statistics on production, sales and import/export that are published by each Automobile Manufacturer Association, we try to clarify the competitiveness of each country and the differences among them. We analyze the global competitiveness of these three countries' automobile industries considering not only domestic production but also overseas production and exports.
Our conclusions are as follows. Firstly, from a viewpoint of the global competitiveness, Japan and Korea are different from China. Japanese and Korean automobile industries have high competitiveness, while Chinese does not. Chinese manufacturers are excessively dependent on Chinese domestic market, and are very weak in terms of exports and overseas production.
Secondly, the global competitiveness of Japanese and Korean automobile industries has been generated from the large size of their home market and their high market share there; both countries have a relatively low percentage of imports in their home market. The number of sales and the total vehicle population in Japanese and Korean home markets are comparable to those in major European countries. Japan and Korea use their domestic market as a springboard to penetrate the global market. Moreover, they are very strong in the area of exports. Therefore, with high domestic sales accompanied by a large number of exports, they can enjoy economies of scale. At the same time, they have overseas production bases notably in US and BRIC markets, with secure sales and a strong market share in those locations.
Thirdly, though China is the biggest automobile country in terms of “Producer Country Base”, Around half of the automobile market in China is occupied by foreign manufacturers due to the relatively weak technology development capability of the Chinese manufacturers.

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze standardization activities of interfaces of automotive embedded system from a semiconductor supplier's point of view, and then try to indicate the germ of ‘Japanese open innovation system’ in this sector. In line with this purpose, we mainly focus on JasPar (Japan Automotive Software Platform and Architecture), a consortium set up in 2004 to promote standardization in software platform for automotive electronic control systems and in communication protocols. As for conducting in detail investigation toward its standardization activities, we deal with two working groups in JasPar: Microcontroller Working group and Conformance working group where semiconductor vendors actively engage themselves on the standardization activities of the debug interface and the FlexRay conformance test specification respectively.
In this paper, we raise a hypothetical question that European consortia is relatively good at managing the horizontal coordination among players that could be advantageous in promoting the creation and diffusion of a standard interface while Japanese consortia JasPar is relatively good at managing the vertical collaboration that could be advantageous in ensuring its interoperability by virtue of drafting the tight and narrow specification. This idea indicates the possibility of there being a transition process of Japanese open innovation system in the automotive sector from the old one characterized as ‘one-to-one’ type open innovation system often represented by Keiretsu system to the new one characterized as ‘M-to-N’ type open innovation system. The Japanese ‘M-to-N’ type is slightly different from the Europeans' in terms of the hypothetical question we mentioned above sense.

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The aim of this paper is to consider the competition review scheme in the Japanese telecommunication industry in light of relationship between layers.
To begin with, a market conditions and regulatory and competition review scheme were reviewed. Then, the possible presence of problems on the competition review scheme was considered from a standpoint of two-sided market. Finally, smartphones in the mobile phones industry was taken up and discuss in greater details.
The following results were obtained:
· At present, the competition review scheme in the Japanese telecommunication industry is formed within network layer of telecommunication industry.
· The government should consider the influence that contents, platform, and terminal layers give to the competition in the telecommunication market.
· Furthermore, the government should consider measures and policies based on the design that network layer compete against contents, platform, and terminal layers.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the transition of technology, product strategy and inter-firm transaction in the phase of market growth for next-generation vehicle with interviewing automotive electric & electronic parts suppliers (Keihin and Denso) in Japan. Particularly, we focused on what the suppliers got interested in about that. In short, what were opportunity and threat for them?
There are 3 conclusions that we found out. The first thing is that both companies considered they would obtain a great chance for their business through the market growth for next-generation vehicle. Therefore they have to enhance their organizational capability immediately. Secondly, they recognize electric manufacturers and foreign gigantic suppliers as tough competitors. And finally, they're concerned about the automobile which has been being “commodity” recently, like household appliances. Thus, not only auto parts suppliers but also all players of auto industry must provide more attractive automobiles into the market to be desired from a lot of consumers.

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The aim of this paper is to analyze and discuss the structural change of the Car Production Networks in the European Automobile Industry. In accordance with Enlargement of the European Union, the transformation of the Car Production Networks in the European Automobile Industry has been changed dramatically. Many automobile factories in the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) emerge as multinational companies' bases which play some important roles in the networks. Restructuring of the CEECs automobile industry has evolved around the integration to the European - wide area networks and it appears a movement to reform the old regional division of labor between “core center” and “peripheral areas”. As for the transformation of new production networks in European automobile system where the regional integration dynamics eternally works, we should understand that the industrial upgrading and changing roles of the peripheries are now in progress, and that it is the continuous process to build up more appropriate structure in division of labor and to reshuffle the comparative advantages in its system.

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This study analyzed the transaction network structure of assembler and supplier companies in battery manufacturing industry in Kansai region by using the network analysis method.
The entire transaction structure of battery manufacturing processes consisting of the first-tier supplier, the second-tier supplier and the third-tier supplier was shown by using the directed graph method. Which is improved version of former studies.
In addition, some special companies whose transactional positions indicated structural advantage in relation with other companies are extracted and analyzed based upon the structural holes theory.
Therefore, it is found that the whole structure of battery industry in Kansai region is not the simple star-like hierarchical relations centered by some core assembler companies, but the set of networks formed around some special companies (key node parts-material suppliers) which can cope with various needs of assemblers by flexible transactions.

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The evolution of mobile devices representing by Smartphone is dividing business model of IT manufacturers. The divide is occurring at two areas. One is to select which business model “vertical integration” or “horizontal specialization”. Another is to select which strategy “platform player” or “product supplier”. Apple is company built the origin of mobile business model as “platform player” based on “vertical integration” and made great success by getting network effectiveness at multi sided market. On the other hand, most of IT manufacturers select the strategy to be “product supplier” based on PC business expertise. Those “product supplier” produce mobile devices to fit the specification of “platform player”, who built the platform on “horizontal specialization” such as Google, and concentrate the position as the device supplier to “platform player”. Recently, in the situation of mobile device booming, many IT manufacturers are trying to get into the mobile device business. I define the difference of strategy of Apple and other IT manufacturers as “Apple model” and “Dell Model” and analyze the deference. Finally I consider the future direction of mobile device business for Japanese IT manufacturers.

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