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- Report: Olympus In Final Stages Of Negotiations To Partner With Sony
- Hitachi And Mitsubishi Stop Domestic Production Of TVs, Optical Discs
- Gadgets Week in Review: Picture Book
- Weekend Watch Update
| Report: Olympus In Final Stages Of Negotiations To Partner With Sony Posted: 23 Jan 2012 03:51 AM PST  It would be a tie-up between two giants: Diamond Weekly, a major Japanese business journal, is reporting [JP] on its website today that scandal-hit Olympus is about to ink a capital and business alliance deal with Sony. Olympus has been under fire for months, after it was revealed the company has covered up large losses for the past 20 years. At some point, Olympus was in danger of getting de-listed at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, but it’s now on a 3-year “probation” that requires the company to improve governance. According to Diamond, Olympus’ top management has been consulting with various electronics companies but chose Sony as the best partner to help get it out of one the biggest corporate scandals in Japanese history. The magazine says that Olympus is planning to hold a news conference as early this week to formally announce the deal. As a next step, the alliance is to get a green light at an extraordinary shareholders meeting in April. Sony currently owns a 0.03% stake in Olympus. Neither company has reacted to Diamond’s report yet.
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| Hitachi And Mitsubishi Stop Domestic Production Of TVs, Optical Discs Posted: 23 Jan 2012 02:10 AM PST  Two big Japanese electronics companies, namely Hitachi and Mitsubishi, are to stop producing parts of their product portfolio domestically: Hitachi announced [JP] it will end production of plasma and LCD TVs in Japan, marketed under the Wooo brand, by September this year. The company owns a plant in Gifu prefecture in central Japan that churns out about 100,000 TVs per month (pictured: a Hitachi Wooo plasma from 2009). Citing price competition in the TV business as the main reason for the move, Hitachi said the plant will be used to produce projectors and chips instead. The company will continue to offer Wooo TVs made by non-Japanese contractors. On the same day as the Hitachi announcement, Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun is reporting that Mitsubishi has decided to stop the domestic production of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. According to the report, the main reasons for the decision are declining DVD sales and (still) weak Blu-ray sales. The company has been producing these discs in its own plants in Singapore and Okayama prefecture in Western Japan for years. Now Mitsubishi is planning to outsource optical disc production to partner companies in India and Taiwan in the future.
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| Gadgets Week in Review: Picture Book Posted: 23 Jan 2012 01:00 AM PST  Here are some stories from the past week on TechCrunch Gadgets: Improvement On Age-Old Mathematical Principle Could Yield Improved Images, Video Sea Change: Apple Guts Textbook Publishing Marketing Genius: Two Twins Giggling As They Sell You Designer 3D Glasses What Is A 3D Printer Good For? Stop-Motion Cartoons Featuring Princesses, Of Course!
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| Posted: 22 Jan 2012 12:38 PM PST  For the third time in a row Tag Heuer has once again released the worlds most precise mechanical chronograph watch. The oddly named Mikrogirder 2000 watch measures time with 5/10,000th of a second precision (and flair). The best German luxury brand A. Lange & Sohne releases a watch that sincere watch connoisseurs will go ga-ga over. It is the new Lange 1 Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar timepiece. California-based Devon previews their upcoming Tread 2 watch. It is a follow-up model to the cool Tread 1 that uses belts to tell the time. A chic geek hit no doubt. Jaeger-LeCoultre offers the Duometre Spherotourbilon with an eye catching tourbillon the seems to gracefully bobble about. The entire package is porn for watch lovers. A full hands-on review of the Linde Werdelin SpidoSpeed Chronograph watch that is the brand’s first ever chronograph. After 40 years the iconic Audemars Piguet Royal Oak watch is still the brand’s best seller. For 2012 the Royal Oak gets refreshed a bit and bumped up in size to 41mm wide. Breitling’s famous Navitimer gets the Photoshop Watch What-If treatment exploring new styles and one that makes it looks basketball themed. 2012 was the year of the big Pilot watch for IWC who makes probably the best high-end classic aviation themed timepieces out there. The new collection of IWC Pilot watches is previewed here before the large industry trade show. Almost exclusively for the icon-centric Chinese market, Piaget makes a range of extremely intricate year of the Dragon themed watches. Learn about these watches an more on the Hourtime Podcast.
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