NEC Eyes Mobile Net as Ticket to Europe
washingtonpost.com
By Edmund Klamann
Reuters
Wednesday, March 13, 2002; 2:18 PM
HANOVER, Germany, March 13—NEC Corp, Japan's biggest mobile handset maker, said on Wednesday its expertise in mobile Internet technology will make it a force to reckon with in Europe, where its handset sales are now next-to-nothing.
"This is a good chance for us to have another shot at the European market," Hiromi Orikawa, NEC's general manager for mobile phone marketing, said in an interview.
Several of Japan's handset makers arrived at this year's CeBIT technology trade fair sporting snazzy new phones for Europe with colour screens, tiny built-in cameras and Internet connections—all now standard features in their home market.
Many are eager to use those technologies to carve out a bigger piece of a market they long ignored or lost their way in, partly because Europe uses the GSM standard, which differs from Japan's unique format.
"NEC couldn't do much business in ordinary GSM phones," Orikawa said. |
