Philips eyes early exit from handset race

NEWS Gerard Kleisterlee, who takes over at the start of May, is reported to have said that the company is looking for a partner but had not ruled out disposal. "You have heard it here now", he said. A company spokesman confirmed that disposal of the handset operation was an option. Mat Hanrahan, senior analyst at Bloor Research, said: "It is the tail end of an over-ambitious expansion. Everyone was talking about people having three mobiles and using them as fashion accessories. "But now there aren't that many data services and it looks as if GPRS, promised for two quarters ago, is going to be later than ever." Philips took large losses before breaking even with about six per cent of the market in GSM phones. This year the company will ship only around 17 million phones of an expected 20 million. A proposed deal with LG of South Korea failed to materialise. Most other phone makers are reporting slow-down or problems, especially Ericsson and Motorola.