So Sorry, Sony

Nettled by constant charges that Japanese businessmen flood the world with exports while keeping their home markets closed to foreign competition, Sony Corp. last year ran full-page ads in U.S. newspapers offering to help American companies sell their goods in Japan. The ads were more effective than Sony had bargained for. Motorola Inc. quickly sought the Japanese giant's aid in marketing, of all things, TV sets in Japan, and embarrassed Sony executives had no choice but to comply. So, while Americans continue to buy great numbers of Sony and other Japanese TV sets, Motorola is about to give Sony some com petition in the Japanese mar ket for large-screen color TVs.

Japanese consumers are even more avid than Americans for color TV; some 70% of Japanese households have color sets, v. about 58% of U.S. homes. But Sony and other Japanese manufacturers are only beginning to offer limited quantities of color sets with screens larger than 19 in., and many will not have mass-produced large screens ready for sale until later. But by December, Motorola plans large-scale marketing of color sets with 22-in. to 25-in. screens, to be made in the U.S., and sold in Japan through AIWA Co., which is 50% controlled by Sony.

"Right now, there are a lot of rich Japanese who want really deluxe articles, and we feel that Motorola's big sets are perfect for the situation," says Tadahiko Sasaki, AIWA's sales promotion chief. Motorola, with its long head start on production, could undersell its rivals on their home ground. Transportation costs and Japanese taxes will raise the Tokyo price of Motorola Quasars to a range of $750 to $1,250, or 25% more than they cost in the U.S.--but that will still be below the introductory prices of $1,750 to $1,800 expected on Sony and Matsushita big-screen color TVs.

Motorola is not the only American manufacturer trying to switch TV trade channels between the U.S. and the Far East. While Taiwan factories make more than half of all the black-and-white TV sets sold in the U.S., many under Japanese brand names, RCA Corp. earlier this year signed up the Lai Fu Trading Co. to sell RCA color sets in Taiwan.

Sony and other Japanese sellers of color TV on Taiwan were again caught off guard; they are now fighting back with aggressive marketing techniques. But RCA is off to a winging start; its first shipment of color sets to Taiwan in July was 60% sold before it reached the island. Which shows, perhaps, that U.S. manufacturers hard pressed by foreign competition need not give up the fight; alert American salesmen can still find export markets in the unlikeliest places.

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