Nine major Japanese electronics companies gave the financial report for FY 2008 by May 15, and all but Mitsubishi Electric Corporation reported loss.

The total number of net loss for FY 2008 sets a new record with 2.2242 trillion yen ($23.153 billion), exceeding the highest number of 1.193 trillion yen ($12.419 billion) in FY 01 when there was the foam collapse of IT market.

Three key factors impact the annual performance results, including global economic downturn, the sharp decline in demand for commodity and the Japanese yen appreciation.

Five of the companies expect full year 2009 results will continue to be a loss, totally 622 billion yen ($ 6.475 billion). Electronics, like automotive industry, is the basic industry of Japan that takes time to restore growth.

Electrical conglomerate Hitachi has the heaviest losses of 787.3 billion yen ($8.196 billion), followed by Panasonic and Toshiba which lost over 300 billion yen ($3.123 billion) separately.

Sony, which stood out as the most profitable company among the nine with profits of 369.4 billion yen ($3.845 billion) in 2007, reported a loss of 98.9 billion yen ($1.03 billion) in FY 2008. Toshiba, suffered from the sluggish of semiconductor business, reported its proportion of their capital dropped to 8.2 percent by the end of March this year, 10% below the safety level. Toshiba plans to increase the capital by 500 billion yen ($5.205 billion) to rebuild its finance.

Japan Electronics Sony