NEC Corp, Japan’s third-largest mobile phone maker, Hitachi Ltd and Casio Computer Co agreed to jointly develop handsets to reduce costs.
The three Tokyo-based companies will form a venture in April that will be 71 percent owned by NEC, the companies said in a statement yesterday.
Casio will have a 20 percent stake, with the remaining 9.3 percent held by Hitachi, the statement said.
The companies will continue making and selling handsets separately for the time being, NEC spokesman Yoshifumi Yashiro said by telephone.
NEC, Hitachi and Casio are seeking to weather the market slump that led Mitsubishi Electric Corp, Sanyo Electric Co and Kenwood Corp. to abandon their handset businesses. Mobile phone sales in Japan are forecast to shrink 7.5 percent to 33.2 million units this fiscal year as consumers delay buying new models, Tokyo-based MM Research Institute Ltd said.
“The move is part and parcel of the restructuring in the Japanese domestic handset market,” said Yuichi Ishida, an analyst at Mizuho Financial Group Inc in Tokyo. “NEC, formerly the top player in the industry, still needs to prove it can put the new venture to good use.”
Hitachi and Casio have been jointly developing handsets since April 2004, Casio Hitachi Mobile Communications Co’s Web site said. The Tokyo-based venture is 51-percent owned by Casio, with Hitachi holding the rest.
Sharp Corp was Japan’s largest maker of mobile phones by shipments, with 23 percent of the market in the 12 months ended March 31, an April 22 report by MM Research said.
Panasonic Corp was second with 18 percent, followed by NEC with 13 percent, the research firm said. Casio and Hitachi were among the top six makers ranked by the researcher.
NEC fell 2.9 percent to close at ¥300 (US$3.31) on the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday, compared with a 2.3 percent decline by the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average. Hitachi slumped 4.4 percent to ¥304 and Casio lost 4.5 percent to ¥829.
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