From consumer AV to mobility and professional radio — VISION2023 (2021)

An inherited plan, and the underside of concentration

At the centre of this decade of rearrangement is the remaking of a company that earned from consumer electronics into one that earns from professional radio and in-vehicle equipment. The shift from consumer to professional and automotive that chairman Kawahara Haruo sketched while rebuilding Kenwood in 2002 passed through the 2008 merger that made one company out of two proud houses of different origin, through president Tsuji Takao’s sorting of the portfolio into three fields, and came to rest in president Eguchi Shoichiro’s VISION2023 as a company-wide plan with numerical targets. That a business concept handed down over twenty years reached as far as rewriting the majority of the sales mix is the measure of this decision’s weight.

Yet moving the place where the money is earned does not by itself guarantee future stability. The automotive market’s technical premises are in motion with autonomous driving and electrification, and the data services attached to connected dashboard cameras demand both the ability to sell devices and the ability to accumulate recurring subscriptions. The lightness gained by letting consumer go and the bias carried by concentration on a single field are two sides of one thing. How far the overseas assets obtained through the merger can be extended into emerging markets and medical imaging, and the quality of the earnings raised further, is where the next problem lies.