Toyota Abandons Goal of 15% Global Market Share

Washington DC August 11, 2009; The AIADA newsletter reported that new Toyota President Akio Toyoda has abandoned the goal of grabbing a 15 percent share of the global market as part of a back-to-basics focus on quality over quantity.

According to Automotive News, the target was set in 2002 by then-President Fujio Cho as a benchmark for charting Toyota's rapid growth. Cho wanted the 15 percent sometime after 2010. Toyota had a global market share of 10.7 percent in 2002, according to the Automotive News Data Center.

But Toyoda's Toyota has different priorities. For starters, Toyoda took office in June amid an unprecedented global slump that has his company battling its first loss in decades, not priming for expansion. Toyoda has said the previous era of rapid growth overstretched the company's resources.

Today, Toyota has global production capacity of around 10 million vehicles, but it plans to sell only 6.6 million in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2010. The latest forecast represents a 12.8 percent retreat from global sales of 7.57 million vehicles last year.

Toyota's new management believes the capacity glut was the result of chasing numbers instead of customer needs.