Kyocera Communications
 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary of Kyocera International |
|---|---|
| Industrie | Telecommunication |
| Gegründet | April 1st 2008 formed by the merger of Kyocera Wireless and Sanyo Mobile Phone Division |
| Produkte | Mobile Phones |
| Parent | Kyocera Corporation |
| Website | http://www.sanyowireless.com/ |
Sanyo Wireless is a brand of Kyocera International.
Sanyo started selling cell phones in Japan and eventually started selling overseas. Sanyo's U.S. mobile phone division had received the J.D. Power and Associates Highest Ranking multiple times. After Sanyo struggled to make a profit, they sold off their mobile phone division to Kyocera in 2008. Currently, Kyocera operates both Kyocera Wireless and Kyocera Communications in the same headquarters in San Diego. Kyocera Communications phones are branded Sanyo.
History
Sanyo entered the cell phone market in Japan in the 1990s. The mobile phone carrier au/KDDI retails Sanyo headsets for its CDMA 1X WIN branded EV-DO network.
After much success in Japan, Sanyo started selling phones in the United States in 1998. The first model was the SCP-3000. [1]Sprint Nextel Corporation had exclusive rights to sell Sanyo mobile phones in the US. In March 2001, Sanyo was the first to offer America a phone with a color LCD display. In 2003, Sanyo was the first to bring to America a phone with a built-in digital camera.[2] Sanyo supplies ReadyLink phones for use on Sprint's CDMA & EV-DO wireless networks. Sanyo has won multiple Wireless awards from J.D. Power and Associates since 2002. [3][4]
Canada eventually followed suit, Bell Mobility shares the same U.S. models with Sprint Nextel Corporation. Many of these new phones come with advanced multimedia features.
In the United Kingdom, Sanyo has only ever sold two models, S750 and S750i, but they were eventually discontinued by Orange.
Merger With Kyocera
In 2007, competition was tough in the cellphone market that merging with several companies including Sharp Electronics and Kyocera was explored. Ultimately, it was decided that Sanyo Mobile would merge with Kyocera in 2008 for $300,000,000. On April 1, 2008, Kyocera-Sanyo Telecom was formed. Kyocera stated that they intend to sell Sanyo-branded phones till at least 2011.
On January 30, 2009, Kyocera announced that they would consolidate both of their U.S. handset groups, Kyocera Wireless Corp. and Kyocera Sanyo Telecom into one.[1] On April 1, 2009, a year after the merger, they officially changed their name to Kyocera Communications (KCI) and moved all operations to their San Diego U.S. headquarters.[5]
On March 31, 2010 Kyocera Communications merged the entire cell phone unit with Kyocera Wireless to form Kyocera International (KII)[2]
Panasonic acquired Sanyo on December 21, 2009. [6] The last scheduled Sanyo Wireless branded phone is the Zio (originally a Kyocera branded phone) which was released on August 21, 2010 on Cricket Wireless. [3] It is unknown if Kyocera International will release any more Sanyo Wireless branded phones.
Fun Fact
 | This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. (August 2010) |
By Pressing ##786# on a Sanyo branded phone, the RTN menu is displayed. Here the mobile number, MSID and other back door programming tools, as well as see how many calls you have made, the software versions of the phone, activation and warranty dates and life timing data is displayed. You also can see if the phone has ever been owned by some one else and is refurbished. Finally, you can reset or self test it.