SHARP Corp, Japan's biggest mobile-phone maker for the domestic market, will start its wireless business in China later this month.
The company will begin selling the FH9010C handset in China in June, Sharp said in a statement yesterday, without giving further details.
The company will start selling mobile phones this month through Dixintong, China's largest wireless phone retailer, the Nikkei newspaper reported yesterday, without saying where it got the information. The models to be sold in China are based on Sharp's Aquos-series of handsets and will probably cost 4,550 yuan (US$659), the report said.
Osaka-based Sharp aims to expand its handset sales overseas to offset declining sales in Japan, Bloomberg News said.
Domestic mobile phone shipments in volume in April fell 23.3 percent from a year earlier, marking a third straight month of a year-on-year decline, according to Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association.
Income at Sharp's audio and telecommunications equipment business fell 14 percent last year to 38.3 billion yen (US$357 million). Sharp forecast on April 25 the division will post profit of 42.5 billion yen in the 12 months to March 31, 2009.
Sharp supplanted NEC Corp in 2005 as the leader in domestic handset shipments and has been No. 1 ever since, according to MM Research.