The Japanese manufacturer has sold 8.96 million vehicles last year with a 6.5 percent increase in revenues at 23.4 trillion yen
Toyota is the number one automobile company in the world in sales number. They took over the number one position from General Motors few years ago and maintained the gap continuously every year. The big challenge for Toyota is coming from Volkswagen which has lots of brand under its umbrella to help the company take the number one position from the Japanese manufacturer.
Recently Akido Toyoda, president of Toyota said about the danger faced by the company and its rival from change in transport to new players in the market. He said that the biggest rival for Toyota is technology companies as they are backed up by huge funding which even the scale of a company like Toyota won’t be able to match.
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These companies are investing huge money in new technologies and they can change their focus from one thing to other very easily compared to big companies like Toyota and other manufacturers. Akido Toyota also said that the automotive industry is hurtling into a new era of profound transformation which comes only once 100 years and the rule of competition is also changing, a life or death battle has began in a world of unknowns.
Even though company has posted record profits last year, Akido believes that things won’t be sailing smoothly like this in the future. The Japanese manufacturer has sold 8.96 million vehicles last year with a 6.5 percent increase in revenues at 23.4 trillion yen and the profits for the end of March this year is 2.4 trillion yen which is largely thanks to the yen’s weakness.
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The company is expecting 15 percent profit to fall in the coming year as the Yen strength increases and Toyota is planning huge cost cutting on various ways. But the Japanese manufacturer won’t stop investing money on new technologies as they want to develop and lead the automotive world. Toyota was the first manufacture to mass produce hybrid cars and they want to stay ahead like this in future technologies also.
North America is the most important market for Toyota and last year the sales of the company was not strong as Corolla and Camry are the main models which are sedans and the customers are looking toward SUV or crossovers which is why the company lost market share. But the overall market has also coming down in North America. We can expect Toyota to introduce more innovative cars in the future just like they did with the Prius in 1998.