Tokyo – Strong demand for camera phones and LCD displays helped the electronic devices segment at Sanyo Electric make a 20 percent sales jump during the company’s fiscal third quarter, to $858.6 million.
This segment accounts for the majority of company consumer electronics products.
In Japan, where camera phones are the hottest telecom trend since the rise in popularity of the mobile Internet in the late 1990s, users climbed to15 million by the end of 2002, according to the company.
Sanyo digital cameras, another hot CE product, saw third quarter sales increase 9.6 percent year over year, leading the company to claim a 30 percent share of the world’s digital camera market.
Strong demand for cellphones during the third quarter, ended Dec. 31, boosted sales in Sanyo’s A/V Information Communication Equipment segment by 32.1 percent year over year, to $2.2 billion.
Sanyo said it is pointing toward sales of 8.4 million cellphones in the current fiscal year, ending in March, up dramatically from last year’s 5.7 million units. Cellphones featuring cameras enjoyed strong demand as part of the increase, said Sanyo.
Sanyo’s battery segment posted a 2.1 percent sales increase in the third quarter over the same three months in 2001, primarily because of a ‘slight recovery’ in demand for mobile phone and PC batteries. Sales came in at $677.1 million for the period.
Sanyo consolidated sales for the third quarter jumped 17.9 percent, hitting $4.8 billion, up from $4.1 billion in the same three months the previous year.
At the same time, consolidated operating income surged to $145.6 million, compared with $42.3 million in the year-ago three months.
Consolidated net income moved into the black in the third quarter, coming in at $22.5 million, compared with a net loss of $56.4 million in the same three months in 2001.
