Japan's big tech players were too proud to adapt and compete with new players in changing industries.

There was little competition in most electronics categories from the 70s up to the 00s. If you wanted a decent stereo or crt you would go with sony, jvc, Panasonic, pioneer, sharp, or Toshiba. By the time the 00s rolled around, everyone was making lower quality crap in China, while still charging premiums over domestic brands (which were even lower quality).

The Japanese companies did not look at the emerging LCD market logically. They assumed customers would remain loyal and didn't bat an eye at samsung or lg.

They were caught off guard when American customers started buying Korean over Japanese. Their products were much more expensive despite no longer being manufactured in Japan.

Additionally, I'm doubtful that many American customers understood that samsung was a Korean brand, and not Japanese. Samsung already had a good reputation for their cell phones, cameras, and CRTs before lcds took over.

When consumers saw that they could buy affordable samsung lcds that in some cases were nicer than the Japanese models, they made the obvious choice.

The lcd market alone pretty much killed all the big Japanese brands. The only remaining player is sony, and they still can't move lcds. Sony has survived mostly through their music industry holdings, as they purchased many major labels and are now one of the largest labels in the world. They squandered many great brands in their lineup, such as sony phones, portable cd and mp3 players, home audio, and their professional lines by refusing to innovate or improve quality.

The ipod caught them off guard and killed cds and mini disc. Their home audio products were low-mid range at best. Their vaio computers were excellent, but often outdated and overpriced. Their phone deal with Ericsson was mismanaged, and they simply slapped their name on a long series of pretty but unreliable and boring android phones.

Sony believed in their brand, not their products. That works when you are apple and try new things. It doesn't work when you are sony and refuse to acknowledge the times and the market.

The other brands like jvc and Panasonic made arguably much better products for less money than sony. But they got pinned in the middle between the cheap Korean tech and the supposedly high end sony products. If they had tried to match samsung in price they probably could have stuck it out longer in the consumer market.

Essentially, Sony carries much of the blame for ending Japanese dominance in the electronics industry. The only premium products they had were their CRTs, and many other Japanese brands had comparable lines in terms of quality. Sony was too stubborn to properly maintain their brands. Consumers caught on to the fact that sony products in general had not been truly high end since the 70s. The other brands got trapped in the middle between sony and samsung and had to pivot to specialized markets. The emergence of the lcd tv presented an opportunity for the Korean brands to strike and take control of the tv market. At the same time, the ipod and mp3s wiped out profitable markets in home audio. People stopped buying tape decks, cd players, and stereos, all of which supplemented the Japanese brands in addition to the crt market. They all believed too strongly in their brands when their actual products had diminished greatly in quality over the previous decades. The Japanese monoliths had become completely stagnant and arrogant, and got suckerpunched.

I've got no tears for sony, but it makes me sad to see jvc and sharp hanging on by a thread. Those two brands made truly excellent products at a fair price, and tried their damndest to innovate where they could. They just didn't have the resources or brand recognition of sony. If you find an old jvc product, chances are it works just as it did when it was built, vs Sony's pathetic build quality in most of their "midrange" products.