Mitsubishi Electric decided to close its handset business. Now you may haven’t seen a single Mitsubishi-made phone in your life — I’ve seen some of the early GSM models and they sucked big time — but you would surprised to know what kind of high-end phones they’ve been making for the Japanese market. That being said, it’s kinda a sad to see them ending the mobile phone production before having a chance to play with a single Japan-only unit for some time. Sure, we had few minutes with almost all DoCoMo phones during events like Mobile World Congress (3GSM), but we want more — to test them in the real-life conditions.
Anyway, the reason for terminating the mobile handset business quoted include “strategic shifting of the resources to the communication-related business and other businesses the company plans to strengthen.” Furthermore, Mitsubishi Electric’s mobile handset business has recently suffered shipment decreases and it has become extremely difficult to expect improvement in this field.
Meanwhile, Diamondtelecom, Inc., which is a mobile phone sales dealer and a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric, will continue and work to further expand its business, and the company will continue after-sales-service. In addition, approximately 600 employees — including R&D, manufacturing and sales divisions — will be repositioned mainly in Mitsubishi Electric’s strategic businesses… Full release is available from here.