Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. missed its goal of capturing 25 percent of Japan's cellular phone market because of its late introduction of camera phones, the head of the company's mobile communications unit said.
Panasonic brand cell phones finished 2002 with less than 20 percent of the domestic market, Yasuo Katsura said in a recent interview.
While that was up 15 percent from the previous year, it was far from the company's ambitious goal, he said. The company's worldwide share of mobile-phone sales inched up from 3 percent in 2001 to between 3.5 percent and 4 percent last year.
The missed target may heighten pressure on Matsushita Electric to revamp its mobile-phone business, which NEC Corp. surpassed last fiscal year to become the nation's largest. Mobile phones accounted for about 10 percent of Matsushita Electric's 431 billion yen net loss in the year that ended March 31.