Toyota to boost infotech weight
Toyota to boost infotech weight
TOKYO (Reuters): Toyota Motor Corp, Japan's largest automaker and a budding investor in Internet businesses, said on Monday it would set up an infotech research company with other Toyota group firms.
The Toyota InfoTechnology Center Co Ltd, to be set up in January, will be two-thirds owned by Toyota.
It will be capitalized at two billion yen ($18.77 million) with plans to increase that to three billion by next April when a U.S. unit in California's Silicon Valley is established.
The automaker is keen to develop next-generation mobile technology that will go hand-in-hand with its efforts to develop intelligent transport systems (ITS), automotive multimedia and e- commerce businesses.
ITS includes technologies like electronic toll collection and futuristic concepts such as vehicles that can drive themselves.
Toyota, the second-largest shareholder in new telecoms giant KDDI -- to be created by the merger of three firms next month -- said the research firm would target Internet and mobile technologies.
"Toyota views the information and communications business as one of its major next-generation operations," the company said in a statement.
Other investors include Toyota's main parts firm Denso Corp, DDI Corp -- a key firm in the KDDI merger -- and chip and cell phone maker Kyocera Corp, the main shareholder in KDDI. The size of their holdings has not yet been decided.
The new company will have an initial 20 to 30 employees and be involved in the development of new business models.
"While not a big money spinner in itself, the company is likely to be central in pulling Toyota's disparate info-tech interests together," said Mataso Ogasawara, auto analyst at the Daiwa Institute of Research.
Toyota's shares closed up 60 yen or 1.48 percent at 4,110 yen on Monday, after it raised its parent half-year profit forecast on Friday. It did not revise up its forecast of 290 billion yen parent net profit, citing weakness in the euro.
The company has a data telecommunications joint venture with Sony Corp and has made several small investments in convenience store e-commerce ventures and in a satellite communications firm.