Casio Bullish on Overseas Handset Sales
Casio expects a 10 billion yen ($86 million) investment in new mobile phone models to return a profit in the first year, helped by sales of handsets equipped with its Exilim camera and G-Shock watch technologies. The handsets, based on the W-CDMA standard, will be sold at a higher profit margin than earlier models, said Tateki Ohishi, chief executive officer of Casio Hitachi Mobile Communications Co., the Tokyo-based company’s venture with Hitachi Ltd. Full Story Here.
“We are interested in the U.S. and European markets,” Ohishi said in an interview in Tokyo on Sept. 18. “Unlike Nokia or Motorola, which sell low-price models, we’ll focus on a niche. We won’t sell a large volume of products with a thin margin.” “We will probably start shipping WCDMA handsets in the next fiscal year or later,” he declined to provide specific numbers.
Revenue from Casio’s mobile network solutions division, of which handset sales accounted for more than 90 percent, rose 23 percent to 171.3 billion yen in the year ended March 31, or 28 percent of the company’s total. In Japan, Casio sells handsets to KDDI Corp., the nation’s second-biggest wireless carrier. Casio has provided phones to LG Telecom Ltd. since July 2003 and to Verizon Wireless Communications Inc. since October.
Great.. it’s just taking a little longer than we had thought in 2005.. wonder how the GZone is doing?