If NEC knew that they would lose $1.3 billion in a single year, they wouldn’t have entered the phone biz in the first place, since that’s what caused them the biggest losses. And now the complications come, as NEC announced that they will cut 10,000 jobs, and Bloomberg Businessweek is reporting that president Nobuhiro Endo was the one announcing the cuts, especially in the mobile phone segment.
7,000 of these jobs will be lost in Japan and in case you want to know, NEC has around 115,840 last year in March, so there are plenty of people to spare. Don’t worry, as NEC isn’t going down just yet, since it’s in a joint venture with NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung and Fujitsu. And on the computer segment they have the NEC Lenovo alliance, that should generate enough profit to keep them floating. To be honest, NEC had an interesting product at some point, the MEDIAS N-04C shown above, that was the thinnest smartphone in the world for quite a while.
Right now NEC is not a brand that anyone knows or appreciates in the phone biz, so they have to make a big name for themselves. Also, I suppose they only sell products locally, so maybe an expansion to Europe and the USA is welcome. As long as they focus on that ultraslim design and throw in a decent camera and Android they have a good shot…
