Vodafone may supply Sharp’s camera-phones

TOKYO: Sharp Corp, Japan's third-largest mobile handset maker has said on Monday that it was in talks with Britain's Vodafone Group Plc to supply its popular camera-phones. The comment came after the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on Saturday that Sharp had won an order from Europe's biggest mobile operator to offer one million cell phones with a tiny built-in camera. "We are in negotiations with Vodafone but we have not decided how many we would supply," a Sharp spokesman said.

Sharp, which has expanded its market share with phones that can click photos and send them wirelessly. It aims to boost its global handset sales to 183 billion yen ($1.54 billion) for this business year to next March, compared with 157.6 billion yen in 2001/02. According to private research firm Yano Research Institute, Sharp is expected to increase its domestic market share to 13.8 percent in 2002/03 from 9.3 percent last year.

The Nihon Keizai newspaper said Sharp planned to ship 500,000 handsets by the autumn, when Vodafone is slated to start offering camera-phone services to subscribers in seven major European countries. The remaining 500,000 will be marketed for the Christmas season, it said. As Japan's mobile phone market nears saturation with competition heating up, handset makers have been tapping into overseas markets.

Japan is also one of the first countries to kick off third-generation (3G) mobile services, and Japanese handset makers hope to leverage their advanced mobile technology when expanding their global reach.

Last year, NEC Corp and Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. cut a deal under which Hutchison placed more than one million 3G handsets from NEC. On Monday morning, shares of Sharp were up 0.68 percent at 1,333 yen, while the Nikkei average edged up 0.45 percent.

© Reuters