Vodafone in Talks With Matsushita on New Handsets, WSJ Reports
--From AOL.-- Cooters
Newbury, England, Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Vodafone Plc, the world's largest mobile phone company, is in talks with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.'s mobile phone unit and other Asian manufacturers about using them as suppliers of third generation phones, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Vodafone believes Matsushita, with which it has done very little business, is ahead of Finland's Nokia Oyj in the development of third generation technology, the paper said.
Japan will be the first country to launch third generation mobile systems, next May. Vodafone believes this, combined with Matsushita's experience in supplying sophisticated handsets phones to NTT DoCoMo Inc. of Japan, gives it a technological lead over Nokia, the paper said.
Matsushita has a 30 percent share of the Japanese mobile phone market, the WSJ said, compared to a worldwide share of 5 percent. The advent of the next generation of mobile phones, which will introduce a common standard globally, will allow Matsushita to challenge Nokia's 30 percent worldwide share, the paper said.
(WSJ 10/6 p.21)
To access the paper's web site, type {WSJ <GO>}
Oct/06/2000 2:12 ET |
