Kyocera to Withdraw from Consumer Mobile Phone Market by 2025

President Hideo Tanimoto of Kyocera (京セラ, Kyocera) announced earlier that the company will withdraw from the consumer mobile phone market. It is expected to terminate sales in March 2025 and turn to provide mobile phone products and services for enterprises. The reason for Kyocera’s exit is mainly due to fierce price competition from rivals such as China and South Korea, it is difficult to maintain product differentiation while maintaining profits, as well as factors such as prolonged consumer replacement cycles and shrinking overall mobile phone market.

Kyocera provided the first mobile phone product for Kansai Mobile Phone (Kansai セルラーphone, one of the predecessors of KDDI today) in 1989, and has since launched the world’s first lithium-ion battery mobile phone, foldable dual-screen mobile phone, solar-powered mobile phone, electronic Various technical attempts such as paper mobile phones. However, as the competition for smartphones intensifies, Kyocera has tried to develop in the direction of rugged mobile phones, smartphones for the elderly, and smartphones for children, but it is still difficult to gain a foothold in the end. In the future, Kyocera will focus on customizing mobile phones for enterprises and providing services such as maintenance and repair.

Japan’s domestic mobile phone industry, which once flourished because of its closed and unique market, has almost been wiped out in recent years except for Sony—including Panasonic, Toshiba, NEC, etc. have all retreated from the mobile phone market, Sharp was taken over by Foxconn, and Fujitsu’s mobile phones The business was sold to a capital company. Now that Kyocera is also out, really. It can almost be said that only Sony is the sole supporter of Japanese mobile phones.