NEC, Casio and Hitachi Joint Venture to Stay Competitively in Mobile Market

Mobile phone market is always fast and dynamic and as an effort to maintain its competitiveness, some manufacturers could either try to come out with new unique design and if they are not, alternative way is to see how to bring down the cost by either re-align their market strategy or technology partnership. Just recently, NEC, Casio and Hitachi have made a tough decision to merge and appear as a larger mobile phone manufacturer to compete against other rivals in this competitive market space.

With the collaboration effort, NEC will likely to own the major stake with 66 percent of total share, leaving 17.3 percent to Casio and 16.7 percent to Hitachi respectively. No doubt, these companies are relatively smaller in size as compared to its local competitors like Sharp and with the fast penetration of Apple’s iPhone in Japan market lately, it further weaken their local market sales that triggered such a joint venture business decision.

No further detail has been disclosed yet, the deal will be finalized by first half of next year and by that timeframe, NEC is expected to hold around 70.7 percent of stakes with Casio and Hitachi at 20 and 9.3 percent respectively. This will definitely help them to position better with a co-technology, manufacturing sites sharing, as well as sourcing capability which eventually bring down the cost to stay more competitively in this arena.