Sanyo jettisons Kyocera

Electronics group Sanyo is close to closing an agreement which would see it’s struggling mobile phone business to Kyocera.

The move comes as part of a larger restructuring scheme currently under way at Sanyo.

Sanyo confirmed on Thursday that Kyocera had priority biding rights to purchase it’s mobile phone division.

The business is valued at around seventy billion yen but Sanyo hasn’t yet publicly confirmed how much they expect to receive.

Sanyo is expected to focus on solar cells and batteries, the change has been caused by the firm’s poor performance since it has lost losses for three successive years.

The loss is blamed on the saturation of the Japanese mobile market with handsets, which has forced Japanese phone firms to expand over seas and directly into competition with phone giants Nokia and Motorola.

On top of selling it’s phone division Sanyo is also looking to sell it’s chip division.