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The latest Japanese firm looking to offload its assets is Fujitsu. Hoping to find a buyer for its mobile operations unit, the information technology company is hoping to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars as part of a sale.
According to the Nikkei business daily report, Fujitsu are keen to do away with its mobile phone unit as it struggles to compete with bigger rivals within the marketplace. The company has already spun off it mobile operations into a separate company and is already seeing interest from investment funds including Tokyo-based Polaris Capital Group. Britain’s CVC Capital Partners as well as Chinese PC maker Lenovo.
Tokyo-based Fujitsu would stop developing and manufacturing mobile phones, but looks to keep a minority stake in the business and keep its mobile phone brand alive, the report said.
Revenue from Fujitsu’s so-called Ubiquitous Solutions segment, which includes PC and mobile phone sales, was ¥132.5bn in the fiscal first quarter ended June 30, or 14.7 per cent of overall group sales. Shares in Fujitsu gained as much as 2 per cent in morning trade in Tokyo on Tuesday. In late July, shares closed at their highest level since March 2015.
Fujitsu will join one-time rivals NEC, Panasonic, Toshiba and Mitsubishi, which have all stopped making handsets over the past ten years. The departure of Fujitsu would leave just three Japanese mobile phone makers – Sony, Sharp (now part of Foxconn) and Kyocera.
