Japanese High Tech's Five Circles of Hell

Japan’s electronics sector is in a world of pain at the moment. In late February, Elpida Memory (6665:JP), the world’s third-largest maker of PC memory chips, filed for bankruptcy, with $5.6 billion in debt, in the biggest-ever corporate failure for a Japanese manufacturer. Olympus (7733:JP) has been laid low by scandal. Sometime in May, Sony is expected to report a fiscal year loss of about $1.1 billion. This is no passing squall for Japan’s flagship industry. Richard Katz, editor-in-chief of The Oriental Economist Report (subscription required), has crunched the numbers on the sector in recent research reports and has come up with some startling statistics that portray a once-world-beating industry in deep trouble. Here are five of those identified by Katz.

Competiveness: Japan’s share of global exports by high-income OECD countries has fallen to 7.6 percent (as of 2010), compared with 12 percent back in 1984. Two years ago, according to the latest data available, the U.S. share was 16.9 percent; Germany’s stood at about 14 percent. Korea’s share—about 5 percent as of 2010—has been rising steadily and is closing in on Japan.