Asian Wall Street Journal, Hong Kong
August 11, 2005

SEOUL -- South Korea's Pantech & Curitel Communications Inc. said it agreed with Japanese wireless carrier KDDI Corp. to supply third-generation mobile handsets starting later this year, marking the first time a Korean vendor has penetrated a Japanese market dominated by local makers.

Pantech & Curitel plans to supply an unspecified number of 3G handsets, based on code-division-multiple-access, or CDMA, technology, under the Pantech and KDDI's "au" brands.

Financial terms of the agreement weren't disclosed.

"The Japanese handset market is one of the most competitive in the world, with exceptionally high standards in phone design and functionality," said Pantech President and Chief Executive Moon S. Song in a statement. "The fact that we have successfully met these standards represents a major endorsement of our progress in recent years."

Haruhiko Maede, a spokesman at KDDI, said that while the company is open to all handset providers globally, it chose Pantech for its design features and cost.

Mr. Maede said the telecommunications company will start selling Pantech's mobile-phone handsets as soon as later this year, in its first overseas handset procurement.

He said the handset would be priced "several thousand yen lower" than domestic 3G phones, which fetch between 9,000 yen and 14,000 yen, or about $80 to $125. Pantech also said it expects to finalize an agreement on the price per unit with KDDI "within the coming weeks."

News of the agreement helped push shares of both companies higher yesterday. KDDI shares closed up 3.8% at 604,000 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, while shares of Pantech & Curitel rose 0.8% at 1,810 won ($1.78) on the Korea Exchange.