Funai

Funai Electric Co. Ltd. is a Japanese consumer electronics company headquartered in Daitō, Osaka, Japan. It owns the United States subsidiary Funai Corporation, Inc. to market and maintain Funai-licensed brands, such as Sylvania, Emerson Radio, Magnavox, Philips, and Symphonic.

Funai was founded by Tetsuro Funai, the son of a sewing machine manufacturer. During the 1950s before the company was formed, Funai produced sewing machines and was one of the first Japanese makers to enter the United States retail market. Then, the introduction of the transistor technology had begun to change the face of the electronics market. The Funai company was formed, Tetsuro Funai became CEO for 47 years and a self-made billionaire, and the first actual products produced were the transistor radios.

In 1980, Funai launched a sales and manufacturing subsidiary in Germany. Funai also developed the Compact Video Cassette (CVC) format at the same year, a joint development with Technicolor, trying to compete with VHS and Beta. Sales were poor and not well-received, and the CVC format was abandoned a few years later.

Funai began to see rising sales of the VHS format, so in 1984, Funai released its first VHS video cassette player for the worldwide market, while purchased the tape transport chassis mechanism from Shintom for quick and efficient production. Funai had always believed that lower-prices and higher production quantities, without sacrificing quality, were keys to success, and by the late-1980s, Funai produced VHS VCRs and TV/VCR combos for several brands at low-entry level prices. Shortly, Funai became the largest 2-head monaural VHS VCR manufacturer in Japan.

In 1991, a U.S. sales subsidiary was established in New Jersey, and it began to sell CRT televisions. Two years later in 1993, Funai opened two state-of-the-art factories in China to transfer production of VHS VCRs from Japan. Funai became the first VHS VCR manufacturer to sell a new VCR below $100 for the North American Market, and VCR sales spiked. Later, the DVD technology was formed, and by 2001, Funai sold its first DVD player for less than $100. Today, Funai is now the world's largest DVD player producer in the world.

Funai is the main supplier of electronics to Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores. Funai is the OEM manufacturer providing assembled televisions and video players/recorders to major corporations such as Sharp, Toshiba, Denon, and others. Funai also manufactures printers for Dell and Lexmark, as well as digital cameras for Kodak.

In 2008, CEO and founder Tetsuro Funai retired and stepped down from CEO to become chairman. Philips also signed a seven-year contract with Funai to license, sell, and distribute Philips- and Magnavox-branded televisions in North America.^[1]

• Funai Electric Co., Ltd. at BNET
• Funai Electric Co. Ltd. | Company profile from Hoover's

• Funai Global
• Funai Corporation USA