After the ¥111.3 billion loss: betting on printing (2009)

Shedding the devices, concentrating on the inkjet core

The heart of this decision was to read a catastrophe correctly. The net loss of $1.2B (¥111bn) in the year ended March 2009 was not simply a downturn; it was proof that owning LCD, crystal and semiconductor fabs — the fixed-cost core of the four-pillar strategy — turned a collapse in demand into company-wide red ink. Diversification had not spread risk; it had multiplied a single kind of it. Minoru Usui, an inkjet print-head engineer, chose to shrink the devices and concentrate resources on printing, and then executed it against the grain of the industry — selling small/mid LCD assets in 2010, the Chinese crystal subsidiary in 2011 and the eyeglass-lens business in 2013, while rivals were still investing into the very fields he was leaving.

The record operating profit of $1.1B (¥131bn) five years later showed the call was right — with the device burden gone, the inkjet core carried the company. Yet narrowing onto printing only traded one cyclicality for another. The same self-reliant, hardware-first instinct that made the concentration possible now leaves the firm exposed to the slow decline of consumer-inkjet consumables, and that is the thread running through everything after: Heat-Free technology, the push into commercial and industrial print, and the Fiery acquisition are all attempts to build a growth engine that sits beyond the home printer. Betting on printing solved the crisis of 2009 by choosing, deliberately, the problem the company is still working through today.