Panasonic makes the world's biggest 3-D television, a 152-inch, high-definition plasma screen that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and is big enough to project life-size people. The company also sells no-frills refrigerators for poorer countries that come with extra space for pumped water and are priced at $170. And between those extremes Panasonic has a vast catalog of other consumer electronics products in various price ranges, including four types of nose-hair trimmers and a separate device for ear fuzz. But how long can Panasonic keep trying to be all things to all consumers? Analysts complain that Panasonic suffers from a case of the attention deficit disorder they say plagues many Japanese consumer electronics giants. The affliction, critics say, has distracted management and ceded markets to more focused, agile players like the American company Apple and Samsung of South Korea. After the empire-building glory years for Japanese manufacturers in the 1980s, as markets began to clog with cheap products and competition grew more intense, it became clear that the Japanese needed to concentrate on fewer products instead of trying to compete across hundreds of unrelated ones. And yet, despite repeated company promises to 'sentaku to shuchu,' or 'choose and focus' -- an oft-heard corporate refrain in Japan in recent years -- many Japanese manufacturers have struggled to pare their operations and curtail overlapping product universes. Panasonic, shrugging off criticism that it is spread too thin, seems intent on even further product expansion -- despite having lost 103 billion yen ($1.2 billion) on revenue of 7.4 trillion yen (about $83 billion) in the fiscal year that ended in March. The investment bank, Macquarie, predicts that Panasonic's net profit will rebound to 91 billion yen for the fiscal year ending in March 2011, as the global economy recovers. 'It's true our business spans a wide area,' Fumio Ohtsubo, the president, said in a recent interview at the Tokyo offices of Panasonic, which is based in Osaka. 'But it's not as difficult as you might think.' In fact, the new drive by Panasonic to sell to its wares in poorer countries like India and Indonesia has yielded early successes. So has its push into 3-D technology, billed as the next revolution in home entertainment in rich countries like the United States and Japan. But those efforts also increase entropy in an already far-flung product universe, each category with its own broad spectrum -- Blu-ray disc recorders to mobile phones, microwaves to massage chairs, rechargeable camera batteries to automotive fuel cells. At the same time, Panasonic is also shouldering the costs of its 400 billion yen ($4.5 billion) acquisition last year of Sanyo Electric, the world's largest maker of rechargeable batteries and a major manufacturer of solar panels. The purchase was meant to raise Panasonic's standing in the promising renewable energy field, but it also expanded its product line even further. 'We probably sell tens of thousands of products; we've never counted,' said Akira Kadota, a Panasonic spokesman in Tokyo. 'Perhaps even a million?' Sprawl is by no means unique to Panasonic. Until recently Sharp, Fujitsu, Toshiba, NEC, Casio, Hitachi, Kyocera and Sony all made cell phones, while in some cases also building nuclear reactors and advanced business-network server computers. Sony, the electronics and entertainment giant, perhaps best known for its televisions and the PlayStation game consoles, is also busy making car navigation systems and rechargeable batteries for laptops and other gadgets, while also running a movie studio and a financial services firm. That breadth, some analysts argue, is distracting Sony from major battles like the one against Nintendo and Microsoft in the lucrative gaming market. 'A large majority of tech companies in Japan have way too many businesses,' said Atul Goyal, a consumer electronics analyst at the brokerage firm CLSA. 'These companies need to think: what are their strengths, what are their weaknesses, and focus on their core strengths.' Generally bucking the trend is Nintendo, one of Japan's most consistently profitable tech companies, which sells just two hardware products: the Wii home video game console and the DS hand-held. (Staying true to its game roots, Nintendo also makes traditional Hanafuda playing cards and Go board games.) An obvious move that many Japanese manufacturers could consider, favored by American conglomerates like General Electric, would be to sell off money-losing or marginally profitable businesses and cut excess workers. But large layoffs, considered a lapse of social responsibility, especially at larger companies, are still frowned upon in corporate Japan. There have been some steps toward consolidation. Last month, Fujitsu and Toshiba said they would combine their cell phone operations to better compete domestically against companies like Apple and its iPhone. Separately, NEC, Casio and Hitachi merged their handset operations. Panasonic, with 385,000 employees worldwide, continues to push forward on all fronts. Its revamped business strategy, presented to analysts in May, charts a three-year course. Panasonic is aiming for a 330-billion-yen expansion of sales in emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, India and China, and plans to reach 1 trillion yen ($11 billion) from those markets in 2013. And overall, Panasonic means to increase annual sales to 10 trillion yen ($112 billion) in 2013, which would be up 35 percent from its most recent fiscal year. 'We have high expectations for emerging markets,' said Ohtsubo. 'Our focus will be on increasing overseas sales.' To tailor products to local needs, Panasonic says it has conducted 'lifestyle research' in various emerging markets. After visiting Indonesian households, for example, the company designed a refrigerator with extra space for the pumped water that families often store in bottles, as well as a dedicated shelf for medicines and cosmetics that are often stored chilled alongside fruits and vegetables. To drive down costs, Panasonic also eliminated a separate freezer compartment, which simplified manufacturing and cut down on parts, to achieve that $170 price tag for the standard model. At the opposite end of the pricing spectrum, Panasonic has been pushing its 3-D plasma TVs, rushing early models to market in the United States in March, on the heels of the flat-panel market leader, Samsung. Ohtsubo said that brisk sales had prompted Panasonic to raise its internal target for 3-D TV sales to a million units, up from 700,000, in the first year. A 50-inch 3-D plasma TV bundled with a Blu-ray player and glasses costs $2,900. But 3-D vision is not the same as a strategic focus, as is evident in Panasonic's development efforts in other product categories -- like its new Three-Star Bistro microwave, which comes with a new setting that lets users grill frozen fish and meat without defrosting, and which Panasonic boasts is a first. Impressive feat -- or dilettantish distraction? Depends on your perspective. 'In terms of technological potential and breadth, we're on top,' says Ohtsubo. Some others are not sure it is a sustainable strategy. 'When resources are limited, it's important to ask, what do you really want to commit to?' said Michiko Kakiya, a Tokyo-based technology analyst for Macquarie, the investment bank. 'It is important to start choosing.' 