Report Highlights

In 2008, global crisis triggered by the US sub-prime crisis swept the world, which results in global economic growth rate's obvious slowdown. Europe and U.S. have suffered a lot from financial crisis; the financial crisis has impact on Japanese economy. Japanese economy gets into another economic recession period, its growth rate in 2008 is 0.5%, it is forecasted that its growth rate in 2008 will have negative growth.

Weak global economy and harsh credit market results in Japanese personal consumption's recession. In Oct. 2008, Japanese household expenditure decreased 3.8% year-on-year; in Nov., Japanese household expenditure decreased 0.5% year-on-year. Because of Japanese and global consumption market's recession, compared with 2007, many Japanese consumer electronic manufacturers' profitability level has large scale decrease. Consumer electronic giant Sony has its first time operating loss in the past 14 years. In digital appliance market, flat panel TV has decrease, which kept growth in the past few years. As for PC, benefit from low-cost mini-notebook computers' good performance, the sales volume increases, but average single price has large scale decrease. The growth rates of software and information service industry slow down. Global semiconductor market has large scale decrease, Japanese semiconductor market has obvious shrink, it is forecasted that the market will have negative growth in next two years. In order to reply financial crisis, Japanese government decides to relieve part of overseas investors' investment tax in Japan so as to promote the investment in Japan through revising tax system.

In the face of changes and challenges in competition and the market, we release 2008-2009 Annual Report on the Development of Japanese Information Industry, which helps vendors, investors, the government, and research institutions grasp more accurately the industry's pulse and future trend.