Japan’s Sanyo Electric and Taiwan’s Quanta Computer have reached a basic agreement to form a joint venture to make and sell flat-panel TVs, they said Friday.

The televisions will be sold under the Sanyo brand and also offered on an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) basis to other TV vendors, the companies said in a statement. The venture seeks to combine Sanyo’s research and development work and global sales network with Quanta’s low-cost production base in China.

Precise details of the new venture, including ownership details, have yet to be decided, they said.

The deal is the second in two months in which Sanyo has tied up with an overseas competitor and comes as the Japanese company is in the midst of restructuring. Sanyo is expected to record a loss of 233 billion yen (US$2 billion) in the current financial year.

In February, Sanyo said it had basically agreed to merge its CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) mobile phone business with that of Nokia Corp. with a view to capturing the top share of the global CDMA market. A final agreement on that deal is expected to be signed in the second quarter of this year, and the new company is projected to begin operating in the third quarter of this year.

-Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

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