NEC, Casio and Hitachi merge mobile handset units

Japan’s fragmented mobile handset market was consolidated on Monday morning when local vendors NEC, Casio and Hitachi announced plans to merge their respective device units.

Casio and Hitachi already have a relationship in place under the 2004 creation of handset developer Casio Hitachi Mobile Communications, which pulls together Casio’s expertise in the digital camera space with Hitachi’s know-how in image processing. Casio Hitachi primarily builds handsets for KDDI and SoftBank Mobile in Japan as well as Verizon Wireless in the US and LG Telecom in South Korea. NEC develops mobile handsets for Japan’s leading mobile operator NTT DoCoMo as well as SoftBank.

The new entity will be inaugurated in April 2010 and will be called NEC Casio Mobile Communications. From the outset it will be 66 per cent owned by NEC, Casio will own 17.34 per cent, and Hitachi will own 16.66 per cent. However, at the end of June 2010, a capital increase is planned to take place, which will see the ownership structure change to NEC owning 70.74 per cent, Casio with 20 per cent, and Hitachi with 9.26 per cent.

The new entity will focus on developing WCDMA and LTE handsets based on the Linux operating platform and will likely cater to the same operator customer base as the individual firms do at present.