Sanyo and Nokia break up

It’s sad when a seemingly ideal marriage hits the rocks. Nick and Jessica, Bruce and Demi, Sanyo and Nokia. Just four months after Sanyo and Nokia announced that they were forming a joint venture with 3,500 employees to create CDMA handsets, the partnership has ended. Nokia has really washed their hands of the whole thing, saying that they will move mostly away from the CDMA market, which they say has little growth potential, though they will continue to make phones for the North American market. The news is not good for Sanyo, which was looking to the partnership as part of a restructuring plan designed to get them out of the financial mess they are stuck in.

As with so many ruined relationships, there may have been another party involved. The end of this partnership comes just two days after the Nokia and Siemens merger, the two have created a mega-company which will be third in size in the world behind Ericsson and the new Alcatel and Lucent partnership.