Tokyo home appliance manufacturer Kenwood Corp is to start manufacturing digital cellular telephones next autumn to increase its presence in the telecommunications market: it expects that demand for mobile phones will expand after the Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications liberalises the market and frees cellular system operators and phone manufacturers to sell mobile and car […]
Tokyo home appliance manufacturer Kenwood Corp is to start manufacturing digital cellular telephones next autumn to increase its presence in the telecommunications market: it expects that demand for mobile phones will expand after the Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications liberalises the market and frees cellular system operators and phone manufacturers to sell mobile and car phones outright from April 1994 – at present the 16 firms authorised by the ministry can only lease them; Kenwood will invest $24m to build a new plant and expects to make 100,000 to 150,000 phones a year, equivalent to 10% of the current market for the things; overall, it looks to be deriving 20% of its turnover, or about $400m, from telecommunications products in fiscal 1996, up from the present $280m.
