Sanyo Japan today announced the strange, vase-like “eneloop lamp” [press release in English] that can be used both as a regular interior light or as a flashlight (when you pick it up and hold it like one). As a third option, the device also serves as a “healing lamp” once you switch from white to blue lighting.
The eneloop lamp can be charged wirelessly by putting it on its charging stand. Sanyo says two eneloop AA batteries are enough to power the futuristic device for 6 hours in flashlight mode, up to 45 hours in white light mode and up to 16 hours in blue light mode.
Sanyo seems to now entirely focus on projectors targeted at professional customers and businesses. After announcing a $6,000 Wi-fi enabled projector last month, the company today said in Japan [JP] it’s about to roll out two additional models with some great specs.
Today Sanyo Japan announced a new high-end projector, the LP-WXU700 [JP], which is the world’s first WiFi-enabled projector supporting the IEEE802.11n standard (and thus the fastest). Sized at 334.2×78.4×257.5mm (weight: 3.6kg), the device is marketed by Sanyo as a mobile projector.
In Japan, Sanyo is not only known as a maker of home electronics and eneloop, rechargeable batteries, but also as a maker of home appliances. Their Aqua AWD-AQ4000, which will go on sale in Nippon only on June 1 [JP], is the fourth in a series of washing machines that feature a built-in ozone generator to deodorize and disinfect laundry.
Sanyo has released a new “eneloop”-branded and battery-assisted bicycle [JP] that’s aimed at people (in Japan only for the time being) wanting to replace motorbikes and mini vehicles with a “green” alternative. The so-called CY-SPG226’s battery is powerful enough to let the bike travel about 85km with a single charge (which takes 3.5 hours).
As far as picture quality in home cinema goes, nothing can beat laser projectors, which use lasers as light source. And today, Sanyo in Japan made another leap forward by unveiling a new model that boasts 7,000 lumens [JP], which is the world’s highest brightness level.
If you’re lookin’ for a barebones QWERTY candybar on the cheap, Sprint and Sanyo have a handset you should see. Well, they will in May.
We’re not quite sure why they announcing this one a whole month early, but Sprint and Sanyo have let it be known that the SCP-2700 will be hitting the shelves (exclusively at Sprint) come May 10th.
Electric bikes are becoming more and more popular in Japan as top electronics brands such as Panasonic, Toshiba and Yamaha are rolling out new models monthly.
In December last year, Sanyo announced an electric bike and said it may even be exported to overseas markets soon. Today, the company said [JP] that from March on, the local government of Tokushima Prefecture in Southern Japan will get three Sanyo eneloop bikes and the electricity they need from a special solar parking spot.
Sanyo’s compact line of Xacti Dual camcorders was refreshed this morning with five new models. The high-end DMX-HD2000 and DMX-FH11 are the only two that shoot 1080p resolution video. Like Xactis before it, these two also take still photos that are approximately 8 megapixels even when recording video. They can be interpolated up to 12 megapixels as well when not shooting video. Both have a 10x optical zoom.
Update: We now have pricing. Hit the jump.
Sanyo Japan today unveiled its newest projector, the PDG-DHT100JL. Boasting 6,500 lumens, the device is the brightest among all 2-lamp full HD 1-chip DLP projectors on the market.
Most surveillance cameras have two problems: They only deliver pictures in black and white or/and feature super-low resolution only, sometimes even producing basically useless footage.
But now Sanyo in Japan is selling the VCC-HDN1(S) [JP], a full HD network surveillance camera that’s based on Xacti technology. For example, it’s using the same image processing engine built into the Xacti camcorders that are sold to regular consumers.
There were some hiccups along the way but now the deal between Panaosonic and Sanyo (announced on November 3) seems to be perfect. Goldman Sachs and Sanyo’s other major shareholders have agreed to sell their shares to Panasonic, Japanese media are reporting today.
Panasonic will acquire a 70% stake in Sanyo for $1.50 a share in February, resulting in a $6.4 billion deal, the largest of its kind in Nippon’s tech industry. The deal was on hold for a few weeks because Goldman Sachs refused to sell their Sanyo shares (29% of all shares) to Panasonic for $1.37 apiece.
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Andrew Grove, former Intel Corp chairman, is pushing the world’s biggest maker of microprocessors to diversify business by becoming a manufacturer of advanced batteries for plug-in electric cars. This emerging industry is attracting Chinese and Japanese companies like BYD Motors, Panasonic, and Sanyo.
According to an Intel spokesman, Intel already has investments in battery-related companies through its Intel Capital Unit. It is unknown whether they will increase their presence in this field, especially in these weak economic times when corporations are leaning towards cash conservation instead of new investments. Intel is also expecting a 12% decline in sales for the fourth quarter.
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The SANYO R227 will make your life easier by finding you the stations you want to listen to while you pretend to work. As Sanyo’s vice president, Tom Van Voy states, the device needs no tethering to a computer. It seems that it has an own database for Internet stations. Oh, and it looks quite ugly. You have to wait until January to get one for $169.99.
The styling is very evocative of those Tivoli radios everyone loves but I’m going to have to say it’s not my year-end favorite.
Specs come after the jump.
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Panasonic is trying to sweeten the deal on the Sanyo buyout offer it proposed back in November 7th by offering ¥140 per share instead of ¥130. They must really want to settle this.
In order to completely take over, Panasonic must buyout the 3 largest shareholders. Goldman Sachs, owner of a 29 percent stake, exited merger talks after seeking at least ¥250 per share. Both other firms, Daiwa Securites and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, who hold a combined 40.6 percent stake are expected to take Panasonic up on the offer. Both companies were informed about the better deal and Goldman Sachs will be informed on Thursday.
Panasonic intends to conduct the offer next month and make Sanyo a subsidiary by March. Purchasing Sanyo will make it more competitive in the rechargeable battery and solar equipment fields.
Sanyo today unveiled the Eneloop electric hybrid bike [JP], which will be on sale in Japan in early February 2009. The company is following Toshiba, Yamaha (Yamaha even sells two bikes) and Panasonic with their new addition to its Eneloop series of particularly “green” electronic products.
The bike is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and harnesses energy from braking when the bike goes downhill while being able to double the rider’s pedal force when going uphill through powering the front wheel. Sanyo claims their bike can travel 1.8 times faster than non-electric bikes.
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Panasonic is looking to lay out more than $5 billion to take a controlling stake in Sanyo. What does the consumer tech giant see in the smaller, less successful company? Diversification. Panasonic has had great success in consumer tech but has no division for solar tech and only a limited stake in electric vehicle batteries. For Sanyo it’s vice versa — they’re each the other’s missing piece! How cute is that?
If the acquisition goes as planned, the Sanyo consumer tech division, which is losing money, will likely be scrapped or cannibalized. Likewise, Panasonic’s battery division will likely be rolled into the larger and more successful Sanyo one. Either way the Sanyo brand is probably on its way out. My only question is why didn’t they do this years ago?
Sanyo Japan [JP] has announced three IC recorders that can use SD and microSD cards as recording media and are to be released in Japan November 21.
The ICR-S003M is relatively light on features (omnidirectional stereo microphones, MP3 sound recording, three recording modes) but Sanyo claims it’s “the industry’s smallest and lightest IC recorder equipped with an SD memory card slot”. It’s sized at 36.6×96mmx13.3mm and weighs 52 grams. 11 hours of audio can be stored on a 1GB SD memory card. This model will also be sold outside Japan but Sanyo neglected to say when (price in Japan: $100).
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The latest must-have spec in high-end projectors are dual lamps. They offer better brightness control, longer lamp life, but are somewhat hard to find. The latest from Sanyo does, however, sport the dual-lamp goodness and features the standard set of large venue projector features: 5,000 ANSI lumens, 1,100 contrast ratio, 1024 x 768 resolution, and because of the dual lamps, up to 6,000 hours of lamp life. The LP-XTC50 is going to bow at CES ‘09 with availability starting January 9, 2009 for 1,050,000 yen ($10,731 USD).
Japanese electronics giant Sanyo has been in troubled waters for quite some time now so that the rumors that came up in the last days about the company taken over by Panasonic weren’t too surprising. But the speed of the transaction can surely be called unusual.
Japan’s biggest news daily The Nikkei is reporting today Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo and his Sanyo counterpart, Seiichiro Sano, have come to an agreement to let Panasonic acquire Sanyo and turn it into a subsidiary as early as next April, the beginning of the Japanese fiscal year.
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