Sony to move back to Japan camcorder output in China

Sony Corp will shift Chinese production of camcorders bound for the US back to Japan by the end of September in an attempt to shorten the delivery time to three weeks from four weeks, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported, citing company sources.

Currently, the company ships from Japan about 40% of key components, including lenses and image-processing circuits, to China for camcorder assembly there. It takes one week to send the parts and clear customs, so assembling the products in Japan will save that much time, the sources said.

Sony decided to take this step, which bucks the industry trend toward relocating production to China, because it felt that a shorter delivery time - which will enable it to more quickly respond to changes in US market conditions - is more important than lower costs, the report said.

Sony now assembles camcorders at Shanghai Suoguang Electronics Co, a local subsidiary and the company's only overseas camcorder plant. The unit produced 20 0,000 digital and analog camcorders in fiscal 2001, half of which were exported to the US and the other half were shipped in the local market.

From October, Sony will produce the product for export to the US at plants in Aichi and Gifu prefectures, with camcorders made at the Shanghai plant solely for sale in China, the report said.

Sony shipped about 2.4 million camcorders to North America in fiscal 2001, and plans to raise the figure to 2.6 million this fiscal year. It aims to cut the three-week delivery time even further.