Kyocera to buy Sanyo cellular?
updated 01:05 pm EDT, Fri September 14, 2007
Kyocera to buy Sanyo cell?
Anonymous sources claim that Kyocera, the international cellphone maker, is nearing completion of a deal to buy the cellular division of Sanyo. If finished, the deal could cost Kyocera 50 billion yen ($435 million), and would make it the seventh-largest cellphone maker in the world. Reuters notes that the move is not a matter of aggressiveness on Kyocera's part so much as the failure of Sanyo, which has been closing unprofitable divisions in order to regain an economic foothold. As of last March, it had posted a net loss for three years running.
Both Kyocera and Sanyo have been faced with extremely difficult competition in recent years. While the Japanese market has intensified, with a quickening race for better features, the companies have also faced tough international competition, dominated by ubiquitous leaders in the form of Nokia and Motorola. Such corporations are so large that they currently dwarf Kyocera and Sanyo, ranked only 10th and 11th in terms of end-user sales. A new threat has emerged in the form of Apple, which has already sold over one million iPhones.
