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Does the alliance between FujiFilm and Toshiba in the medical field go together?
[2009, Feb 18]
1. Introduction
FujiFilm announced on February 5 that the sales company “FUJINON Toshiba ES system (FTS)”
of the endoscope products which invest jointly with the Toshiba business makes it a wholly owned
subsidiary as of March 31. This could be called part of the strategy in which FujiFilm will foster a
medical business into new business pillar from now on.
Although it is the sale sector consolidation of endoscope products this time, what has happened to
the relation of the both companies in the medical field more and more widely? Is there large range
of probabilities of alliances by an opportunity this time? I will look at from viewpoints, such as
competition and the subsidiary of R&D using XLUS.
The figure shows distribution of the patent application of the both companies for five years these days. Similar patent applications are clusterized and expressed with one circle.
What has a large path of a cluster includes twist many patent application. Moreover, as for the cluster, what has near contents is arranged mutually in the neighborhood.
Therefore, technically, a near cluster forms one group area and corresponds to the field of the medical equipment with which each differs. The field of the apparatus made elated FujiFilm is detection x-rays image area and endoscope products. On the other hand, Toshiba is good at the system fields, such as storage of the image data of ultrasonic diagnostic equipment, MRI diagnostic equipment, X ray diagnostic equipment, and also its diagnostic result, and search.
Moreover, the images analysis for diagnostic seems to have forte technologies, respectively. As a whole, the products field which competes is considered that are few and the advantage by complement is larger much. Although it is integration of the selling enterprise in the endoscope field this time, if it views with the viewpoint only from the technical field, even if both companies will build twist wide joint marketing agreements range of in whole medical field from now on, it can be said that it is not wonder at all.