Close ties with Panasonic over many years.
NNP began as Japan's first vendor of electronic components made by Panasonic, and enjoys a history of over 60 years. At our inception, while dealing mainly in stereo sets, headphones, and other audio products (Panasonic's Technics brand), we also sold vacuum tubes, capacitors, and other electronic components, and during Japan's period of rapid economic growth, we also grew as demand expanded in the market for electronic parts for television sets, refrigerators, microwave ovens, and other such electrical appliances. Since then, as such electronic devices as mobile phones, personal computers, video equipment, and DVD drives became increasingly common, we expanded the area of products we deal in to include semiconductor products and controller components. At present, as a dealer of electronic parts from Panasonic, we provide support for customer product development as well as feedback on customer needs with respect to products, and sell a wide and varied range of both general-purpose and customer-made electronic components in close alliance with the manufacturer. Meanwhile, we have established solid relationships with Panasonic's manufacturing areas and subsidiaries engaged in development, and are expanding the breadth of proposals we make. We are making use of the collaborative systems that have extending over many years to meet customer needs that are ever more diversified and sophisticated.
Through advanced products, we support product-making of accelerating computerization in Japan and abroad.
The lines of business our customers are engaged in can be broadly grouped into automobiles (four- and two-wheel vehicles), industrial equipment, and consumer and home equipment. Of these, automobiles are a central industry in Japan's central Chubu region, where NNP's Head Office is located. Automobiles are becoming progressively more computerized as efforts advance toward achieving self-driving cars, but the fact is that for many automotive manufacturers, electronics is not a core technology. Amid such circumstances, it is not only the advanced electronic components from Panasonic based on the electronics technology that Panasonic has cultivated over many years, of course, but also our ability to make proposals encompassing all aspects of design and development for using electronics that are our biggest strengths, and why our customers hold us to high expectations. To meet needs in a timely way not just in the Chubu region but also in the Tokyo and Shizuoka areas and in western Japan, we have rolled out centers in Tokyo and Osaka. We have also established local subsidiaries in China, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Despite it being regarded as difficult for a Japanese trading company to do business with local enterprises in other countries, we engage in sales to the production centers of Japanese carmakers and provide support for operations that our customer roll out.
We are capable of flexible response, including coordination of manufacturing functions and production outsourcing.
Selling electronic components from Panasonic is our core business, but to continue accommodating needs that are becoming more diverse and sophisticated, we must become a comprehensive trading company for electronics that is capable of providing not just discrete components, but also diverse commodities and solutions to customer issues. As one step in doing this, in 2005 we made an electronic-device manufacturer in the Hamamatsu region into a subsidiary, establishing a system that enables the development, design, and manufacture of electronic controller units and of electrical parts for industrial equipment to be undertaken within the NNP Group. We do not stop there, however, and have also begun to address solutions for a diverse array of issues. As one example of this, in response to a request from a customer wanting to create a system capable of mass-producing independently developed semiconductors for their own in-house products, we coordinated commissioned production at a Panasonic subsidiary in the area of design and development. With Panasonic's deep-ranging electronic products and technologies as our commodities, we work to provide myriad solutions.
