Financial Material

Unit sales of LCD TVs in the third quarter were 2.89 million, up 12% compared to the same period last year. On a monetary basis, however, unfavourable exchange rates and price declines resulted in a drop of 19.6% to 204.9 billion yen. The business environment is extremely challenging with depressed markets, severe price declines and a sharp appreciation of the yen. Against this background, Sharp is striving to distinguish itself from competitors through unique products like LCD TVs with built-in Blu-ray Disc recorders. And as we further enhance global production system of LCD TVs at our five bases, we are localizing not only manufacturing but also product planning, design, and procurement while making use of outside resources. This will make us more cost competitive and shorten lead-times, thus averting the risks of price declines and currency fluctuations, and helping us improve profitability. We forecast that fiscal 2008 LCD TV sales will be 10.00 million units, up 21% compared to the previous year. On a monetary basis, however, we predict sales of 730.0 billion yen, down 10.3%, taking into consideration the price declines resulting from unfavourable market conditions. For LCD panels, worsening supply/demand balance of both small- and medium-size/large-size panels is causing sharp price declines, and third quarter sales were 242.6 billion yen, a decrease of 20.9% compared to the same period last year. In response, we launched reorganization of our LCD plants as announced in December 2008. For details, please refer to Recovery Plan. We forecast fiscal 2008 LCD panel sales of 1,060.0 billion yen, down 14.1% over the previous year.

Sales of mobile phones and wireless PDAs in the third quarter were 115.3 billion yen, down 27.0% compared to the same period last year. On a unit basis, sales were 2.60 million units, down 28%. In Japan, we expect there continues to be little hope for the market to grow. Sharp is therefore quickly adjusting to a market that is becoming polarized between highly functional handsets and more affordable ones in order to expand market share with products that match target users. Overseas, Sharp is expanding business of wireless PDAs for the U.S. and European market, as well as focusing more on the Chinese and other developing markets. We predict fiscal 2008 sales of 440.0 billion yen, down 32.4% compared to the previous year. Unit sales will also fall by 29% to 10.70 million units.

Third quarter sales for solar cells were 37.8 billion yen, up 18.1%. We predict fiscal 2008 sales of solar cells of 170.0 billion yen, up 12.6% over the previous year.