According to this article, American broadcasters are quietly planning to beam the stations signal to cellphones, video iPods, in-car DVD players and other gadgets that would be equipped with TV tuners. The high-quality digital tv broadcasts likely would start in 2009. The new effort could pump fresh life into stations that have steadily lost viewers to cable TV, the Web, game players and mobile phones.
According to Seeking Alpha, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association [JEITA], stated mobile phone shipments in Japan has climbed 39.1 percent to hit a total of 4.2 million units in August. “The industry group attributed greatly the rise in the shipments to a surge in the number of handsets able to receive digital terrestrial television broadcasts. The report said that shipments of 3G handsets climbed 50.7 percent on year to 4 million units, compared to shipments of 2G handsets went down 93 pct to 17,000 units.”
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.
The CIAJ has released the telecom equipment figures for Q1 fiscal 2007 (April – June) that show negative performance continues in the mobile terminal category, which accounts for approx. 70% of the market. Handset sales account for approximately 67% of the market and therefore has a large impact on overall production figures. The 2007 results show a significant drop from the 2006 figure, but is similar to the performance in 2005.The total number of subscribers continues to increase, indicating that the trend among carriers to purchase high-end products by domestic brands and import low-end modestly priced products from abroad continues.
According to this report on WSJ Sanyo said it would sell their retail sales division to Telepark for 4.8 billion yen ($41.6 million). Sanyo had been reluctant to sell off businesses but Goldman Sachs and other investors that last year funded a 300 billion yen bailout have put on the pressure, resulting in management changes and a new strategy. This exit decision was revealed in July however the closing price is well below previous estimates.
According to the Nikkei, via Reuters, Kyocera and Sanyo are close to inking a deal that would merge the device makers into the world’s seventh largest mobile phone manufacturer. The business daily stated Kyocera aims to buy Sanyo’s mobile phone operations for about 50 billion yen ($435 million), Sanyo expects to sell about 11 million units in the current business year to March 2008, down from its initial estimates of 12.5-12.6 million. Both Kyocera and Sanyo said in separate statements that nothing has been decided.
