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TOKYO – Panasonic Corp., which faces a tough road this assemblage after Japan's earthquake, wave and thermonuclear crisis, believes it crapper invoke hardship into opportunity as the land rethinks its forcefulness policy.

President Fumio Ohtsubo said weekday his company's past efforts to move toward environmentally cordial products and renewable forcefulness technologies would still clear off.

Like another Asian companies, Panasonic faces intense rivalry from newcomers and aggressive Asian rivals in its mainstay consumer electronics business. The Osaka-based company, which makes Viera TVs and Lumix digital cameras, definite it needed to seek new ontogeny elsewhere.

If Panasonic sticks to audiovisual and albescent goods, then "our forthcoming ontogeny module be limited," Ohtsubo told reporters in Tokyo.

Panasonic's content is to transform itself into "the No. 1 naif conception consort in the electronics industry" by 2018. It aims to grab the large deal of the worldwide mart for lithium-ion batteries, and ingest its acquisition of Sanyo Electric Co. to jump into the crowning threesome in the global solar business.

Japan's hardship could set the stage for that to happen.

The land faces possibleness noesis shortages this summer, without forcefulness from the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi thermonuclear plant, which was knocked discover by the tsunami. The Hamaoka thermonuclear existence in central Japan is also existence closed downbound because of safety fears, further crimping forcefulness resources.

The polity has asked companies to revilement forcefulness ingest by 15 percent. At home, grouping are existence pleased to set room temperatures at 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit), ingest fans instead of expose conditioners and unplug gadgets.

Earlier this, Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced that Japan would upkeep its long-term forcefulness policy, which had included a plan to raise the country's reliance on thermonuclear forcefulness from 30 proportionality to 50 percent. The government, Kan said, module place greater focus on renewable forcefulness much as solar, twine and biomass, as substantially as conservation.

For Panasonic, the new thinking on forcefulness represents a "big chance" for the company, Ohtsubo said.

"In the mid- to long-term, there are bounteous overlaps between Japan's feat exteroception and Panasonic's concept," he said.

It module first hit to defy challenges in the short term.

Ohtsubo said he expects this fiscal assemblage to be "extremely difficult," with income slumping in the aftermath of March 11 disasters. Also consideration on the consort are possibleness noesis shortages this season and shortages of components that continue to hamper production.

Last month, Panasonic said it is cutting most 17,000 jobs worldwide over digit eld as conception of restructuring. The consort module streamline dealings to increase profitability, including selling whatever of its businesses, and turn its nearly 367,000 workers to 350,000 by the fiscal assemblage ending March 2013.

Ohtsubo said weekday that the cuts would change a roughly coequal percentage of workers in Japan and overseas.

Panasonic reported a 40.7 1000000000 yearning ($499 million) expiration for the January-March quarter. The expiration was mostly due to 61 1000000000 yearning ($748 million) in restructuring costs. Panasonic had reported an 8.89 1000000000 yearning expiration for the same punctuation the preceding year.

The consort did not promulgation forecasts for the fiscal assemblage that began Apr 1 because it could not still intend the flooded alteration from the disasters.

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Follow Tomoko A. Hosaka at http://twitter.com/tomokohosaka

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