Panasonic, Japanese electronics manufacturer announced that the research into new smartphones for retail consumers at home is set to be abandoned.
This comes two months after competitor NEC said it was pulling out of the smartphone market saying that the competition was quite tough.
“We will suspend developing new smartphones for the business-to-consumer market in Japan, and instead will pour our business resources into smartphones for the business-to-business market that is expected to grow,” said the company.
The Corporate smartphones are used in businesses such as warehouses and hospitals where a number of people have to share up-to-date information across a large area.
Panasonic could not keep up with the competition since the rise of smartphones, and have been left behind by US giant Apple and South Korea’s Samsung.
NEC said in July it plans to exit its smartphone business, with chief financial officer Isamu Kawashima saying “we were late to enter the smartphone market, and we were unable to develop attractive products”.
In the three months to June, Panasonic booked a net profit of 107.8 billion yen ($1.08 billion),which is a 742 percent increase from a year earlier, and the operating profit were 64.2 billion yen which is a 66.3 percent increase.
The mobile unit was however falling, as it recorded a loss of 5.4 billion yen even though it recorded a 86 percent in sales.
Panasonic and its domestic rivals, including Sony and Sharp, have been undergoing painful restructuring aimed at stemming years of record losses largely tied to their electronics units.