Japan's "Diamond" magazine published June 8 Japanese business consultant Financial Research Center of Waseda University Noguchi Norio an article entitled "What is the root cause of Japan's semiconductor industry is recession? . " Generally it believes that the reason is that the Japanese semiconductor industry downturn technology outflow and bad investment decisions, but the author believes that the key lies elsewhere. Now article excerpts are as follows:
Japanese experts introspection: why our semiconductor lost?
Japanese semiconductor industry fell in the first place
In the 1980s, the semiconductor industry in Japan ranks first in the world production accounted for about half of global share. Particularly important part is, mainframe computers began in the 1970s with a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) production.
Later, however, it seems to have become significantly behind Japan.
First, DRAM began primarily for personal computers (PC), the performance is not required while the price is cheaper. South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. by large-scale investment in equipment to reduce costs, expand market share. On the other hand, US companies Intel entered the central processing unit (CPU) field.
Japanese manufacturers failed to respond to this change in the market share decline in the share. At the same time, starting from the latter half of the 1990s, semiconductor manufacturers began restructuring.
In November 2002, Nippon Electric Corporation (NEC) NEC Electronics Corporation was set up, in April 2003, Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Renesas Technology has set up a company.
After April 2010, NEC Electronics Corporation and Renesas Technology companies integrate operations, Renesas Electronics Corporation to be established. However, a few years later, the company began to show poor performance by nearly 50,000 employees at the newly established, now reduced to around 20,000 people. In May 2019, it was reported that the company has long been discontinued at 13 factories in Japan and overseas.
In addition, production of DRAM is different from the "Flash" Toshiba subsidiary Toshiba memory, which would revert to the US-based investment fund under the command of the US-ROK alliance.
Japanese companies in the integrated circuit (IC) market share, in the second half of the 1980s more than 50% in 1990, also accounted for 49%. But by 2017, the share of Japanese companies has dropped to 7%. 
Lack of information in the field of research capacity
Why would this be the case then?
There are two frequently mentioned.
First, the loss of technology. It is said that Samsung Electronics with high salaries to dig in the art from Japanese companies, or at the weekend quietly invited them to South Korea, thus "stealing" the Japanese technology companies.
Second, the Japanese entrepreneurs failed to resolve large-scale investments like Samsung.
These problems do exist. But, they say these are the root cause of Japan's semiconductor industry recession, is very doubtful.
If the loss of technology did not happen, and courageous decision by Japanese entrepreneurs, the Japanese leadership position in the field of low-cost DRAM. Even so, Japan will later development of the semiconductor industry help?
DRAM not need high technology products, so the emerging countries will one day produce a low-cost DRAM products. As a result, the semiconductor industry in Japan will be because of price competition with emerging countries and recession.
In fact, the same thing happened later in the field of liquid crystals. Not only is the LCD, in many areas of manufacturing, as the product is commercialized, price competition will intensify.
The real problem is that the Japanese semiconductor industry, did not need high-tech products such as the transition to the CPU. Why do you say? Because of the high value-added, not the DRAM, but the CPU.
Intel's technology monopoly by the CPU production. In conjunction with Microsoft's operating system, the establishment of what became known as "Wintel" alliance of architecture, thus allowing to dominate the PC industry.
So, why the Japanese semiconductor manufacturers could not produce it to the CPU transition? That's because basic research is not enough.
Semiconductor known as "the science industry." Japan last century before and after the 1980s, is the basis for the development of power semiconductors with fields. However, with the core technology after steering information from the commodity, material, it is difficult to deal with the Japanese.
On the CPU, it is important not just semiconductor chip hardware itself, more important is the integrated software part.
The same thing happened in other areas, such as camera field.
In the transition from film cameras to digital cameras stage, Japanese camera makers is to keep up with the trend. However, the use of smart phones, the most important thing turned into artificial intelligence provides image recognition function smartphone.
In other words, the camera lens than this "eyes" image processing information at a later stage in the "brain" has become essential. In this area, Japan's basic development capabilities significantly behind.
Eventually, the Japanese semiconductor industry in the world trend after falling behind in the 1990s, the fundamental reason is the lack of ability to create something new, especially in the field with information related to the complete lack of innovation.
The importance of basic education
The new technology may come from companies, but not entirely so. University basic research is also important.
In the 1980s, when American industry is relatively weakening of American universities is still very strong force.
According to the changing times, research and education institutions University to obtain a reconstruction, a corresponding change in the content, which is very important. That is the source of creating Intel Corporation, later also become a source from the information technology revolution and the development of artificial intelligence.
So, how is it in Japan? In the 1980s, when Japanese semiconductor industry to dominate the world, and in related academic circles, but also powerful. In the semiconductor-related international Society, the Japanese scholars playing a leading role.
However, this failed to maintain the state down. After that, Japan's research ability.
You may wish to use the number of papers in the world rankings to be proved. "Science and Engineering Indicators" report distributed after 2018, the National Science Foundation for science and technology trends in the world to sum up the display, the number of scientific and technical papers on the 2016 world rankings, China in the first place.
"US News And World Report" magazine also made to divide the field of world university rankings. In the field of computer science, in 2019 ranked first in the world is China's Tsinghua University. University of Tokyo University in Japan ranked first, but the one hundred and thirtieth ranking 5th on the world rankings.
Thus, Japanese universities in the most cutting-edge areas have been behind the development of the world, because of the research and the education system can not be reconstructed in accordance with changes in society.
If you stop growing, the University can not be reconstructed. It is not required to complete the study in the field of social, nor economic growth.
In no economies of scale to expand society, to change the structure of the university, how to do it? How should we do this to establish the mechanism?
This is a very difficult subject. However, we have to find the answer.
This switched: https://www.linuxprobe.com/japan-nec-dram.html