Nippon Electric Company
1980

Although NEC always was more industry oriented than Sony or Pioneer, like Toshiba or Matsushita, the 1980 graph above nevertheless shows well the growth of consumer audio up to the end of the "golden age" and the minimal proportion of said market segment compared to telecomunications, data processing or industry activities. Sony, for instance, published several similar graphs throughout the 1970s which showed about the same order of things: audio is a small portion and serious audio is nearly... infinitesimal. The proportion of domestic vs. overseas is also interesting to see.

It is thus no wonder that, first of all, japanese high-end audio quickly went south after the second market crash of the early 1990s. And even more fascinating Panasonic kept Technics alive until 2005, at a time all others already had either vanished (Akai), completely cut down on audiophilia (Sony, Pioneer), almost disappeared from visible sight (Kenwood, Victor) while the remaining ones already had once again changed ownership and /or struggled to keep some identity and market share (Marantz, Luxman). Tiny outlets like Onkyo or Accuphase don't even count within such proportions...

NEC entered "serious" hifi in 1978/79 but 1980 itself proved to be a sort of standstill for everybody. Only the upcoming CD format gave hopes of renewed growth. It worked well until the first 1987 crash and maintained itself as demand was still there. But the same problem that had surfaced in the very late 1970s reappeared just before and after 1992 : the market was completely saturated and costs were again rising high. Time to build less drastically, to cut on shipping costs rising due to weight, to reduce lineups or even shelve them. - or stop making quality audio.
The music-making audio components we all cherish always, always, were a microscopic spot in the greater schemes of industries - which makes these units even more, literally, exceptional.

NEC build exceptional components but always made more money with satellites and cash-registers. By 1996, NEC Audio was gone. Along it went earlier-absorbed Fujiya Audio Ltd. which had designed and built the Nakamichi Dragon CT and many more archives and souvenirs.
What's left of a once flourishing industry is now in the hands of those that lost the first battle: europeans and americans. The prices aren't the same, though, and the quality/price ratio seems to be definitively in the out-of-hand range to say the least.

This page is made with a 1980 USA corporate leaflet presenting all of NEC's activities in the world.

Founded in 1899, NEC had in 1980 a payroll consisting of 60,481 people ; the chief officer was Koji Kobayashi and the president Tadao Tanaka ; capitalization was 188M$ (or 41B¥).