TOKYO—NEC Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Texas Instruments Inc. are in talks to cooperate in a mobile handset venture, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
If the three parties agree to work together, it would represent yet another handset alliance in an industry increasingly dominated by Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc., which together hold about 56 percent of global market share. The top six handset makers hold about 86 percent of global market share.
NEC has struggled with its mobile handset business as net profits sank 84 percent and handset shipments dropped to nearly 11 million units in the year ended in March; the prior year NEC had shipped more than 13 million handsets. The company used to be Japan’s top handset maker.
“Through an alliance, we will be able to take advantage of scale to win back domestic market share, which is necessary for us to move into the market abroad,” NEC’s President Kaoru Yano told the Journal.
