Alpine Electronics has teamed with Toshiba Corporation to make industrial drones. And, it has joined with IBM Japan to start developing next-generation in-car systems for use in self driving cars.
In announcing its financial results this week, Alpine noted its plans to make drones as well as “compact unmanned aerial vehicles.” Alpine will contribute expertise in navigation to the project and Toshiba will contribute know-how in image processing and the Internet of Things.
The drones will be used for inspecting electrical power lines and steel towers, which can be a dangerous task for human inspectors.
Alpine reported a sales decline for the first half of its fiscal year. Sales fell to $1.14 billion (120,870 million yen) compared to $1.32 billion for the same period a year earlier. Profits swing to a loss of $19.9 million compared to a profit of $107.7 million a year ago due in part to unfavorable exchange rates that are impacting many Japanese companies.
Sales of Alpine navigation and info technology in-car products however fell 11.3 percent to $939.3 million.
Yep…I agree with Gary, it is time to move on. It was a good ride, but the world doesn’t really need us any longer. Plus side…we will all get to try new things and re-invent ourselves. Think of the all those things you wanted to try out, but never had the time. There were many industries, just like ours, that are no longer around. This is just the evolution of our species.
we are all looking for something more to do.