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NEC Australia announces restructure to focus on business and services market

15 January 2008 – Melbourne – NEC Australia today announced a strategic restructure of its local business to focus solely on its core ICT/network communication solutions and services with a greater emphasis on delivering service and consultancy to its business and government customers.  The move comes in response to rapidly changing market conditions in retail, the weakening Australian Dollar, and is in line with a focus of its resources and energies on the business and government markets.

As a result of the restructure, NEC Australia will cease its retail offerings as of 1st March 2009 including whitegoods, consumer appliances, home entertainment as well as consumer LCD and Plasma TVs.

Commercial displays, including digital signage and business projectors, are unaffected by the restructure and NEC will continue to sell this range to the business market via its Display Solutions Division.

Mr Wataru Takeuchi, Managing Director, NEC Australia said: “This move forms part of our strategic evolution towards redefining NEC Australia as a business services company.  As such, a decision has been made to withdraw our retail products in order to focus our resources and energy on our key strengths which are our business offerings and our Research and Development capabilities.”

NEC Australia will continue to offer its ongoing support to existing customers by honouring its warranty and extended support agreements.

The restructure will result in approximately 200 staff leaving the business by the end of March through a combination of voluntary and compulsory redundancies, with the majority coming from the Retail division.

For media enquiries please contact:

Will Clarke

NEC Australia Pty Ltd

Tel: 03 92714172

Email: will.clarke@nec.com.au

Alec Stanwell

n2n Communications

02 9213 2305

astanwell@n2n.com.au

Visit http://www.nec.com.au/mediaroom/default.htm for more information

About NEC Australia – www.nec.com.au

NEC Australia is a fully owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation. NEC Corporation operates in 44 countries around the world, employing over 153,000 people with annual revenues in excess of $US45 billion. In Australia NEC researches, develops and deploys advanced IT/Network communication solutions and services tailored to business and government. Its product range includes PBX, Broadband Access Systems, Digital Signage, Systems Integration and Hosted Application and Network Services amongst many others.