14 DAY TRIAL // Rumors have been going by lately saying that Sanyo Electric intends to give up playing a major role on the mobile phone market. The company has responded to the rumors, calling them "speculation" and promises to continue their work on the handset market.
Rumors said that Sanyo was about to organize an auction for giving the opportunity to several interested people to place their bids on Telecom Sanyo. Among these, there was also a Mitsui&Co subsidiary stated, which made the news even more worthy to be believed.
Sanyo is currently going through some restructuring processes, after a consolidated net loss has occurred for the third time in a row over the past years. Telecom Sanyo was said to be keeping back the overall company development and was not able to help it get back on the right track and add to its profit.
Its mobile phone sales have reached almost 40 billion yen in the last financial year. Still, that was not enough to compensate for the three years of bad luck that the company has had until now. This was the main argument for everyone to think of the possibility of seeing this business likely to be put up for sale.
"The Nikkei Shimbun article is purely about the potential sale of "Telecom SANYO", a 100% subsidiary of SANYO Electric Co., Ltd. and domestic mobile phone sales business unit, which operates approximately 80 mobile phone retail shops in Japan and also sells other manufacturers' brands. Therefore Telecom SANYO is solely a retail operator, and has no relation to SANYO's mobile phone manufacturing business. In addition, the article was purely written based on market speculation, and was not officially announced by SANYO", states a report coming from the company.
Sanyo also promises to continue their work in mobile phone manufacturing. Although not directly stated, this means that rights over Telecom Sanyo will stay out of any auction rooms for some time now.