Following a January announcement by Sanyo that the company would sell its mobile phone business to Kyocera, Mitsubishi announced that it will quit the loss-making mobile phone business, in face of acute competition from leading mobile phone brands such as Nokia and Samsung, according to a report by Nikkei Tech-On.

Moreover, Mitsubishi, which has already withdrawn from the overseas mobile phone markets, is slated to cease shipment for its main domestic mobile phone client NTT DoCoMo by September 2008. NTT DoCoMo is among the Japanese mobile operators which have been cutting subsidies for the retailers so as to hold down mobile phone prices, a trend projected to attenuate the consumers' replacement demand and further aggravate the mobile phone makers' businesses.