Everyone likes their toast done a certain way, but Balmuda is well known for giving you the ability to cook your breakfast bread in style. Its fancy, steam-utilising toaster line is famous in Japan and the US. They also produce other essential appliances. Now the company wants to break into the smartphone market.

Balmuda, from home-ec to handsets

It’s a bold move. The smartphone market isn’t the easiest space to thrive in, and even the big names know that. But Balmuda is confident, with CEO Gen Terao explaining that the company is looking not to come out on top in sales, but in style.

“Smartphones today seem all the same, and consumers have few options,” he said. “This offers an opportunity for us. We seek to become No. 1 in terms of uniqueness, rather than market share.”

Balmuda’s smartphones will be produced by the manufacturing company Kyocera. Specs-wise, they’ll run on Android’s OS and will be 5G ready, and will be offered in standard and SIM-free models. Not much else is known yet, even in the realms of actual design and price range.

Right now, it appears that Balmuda plans for its smartphone to be a Japan-exclusive product, but chances are it could eventually make its way overseas. That’s what happened with the company’s toasters, after all.

“[The smartphone business] is the biggest market we can take on,” Terao went on to say. Again, Balmuda is confident that its phone line will bring in the same success as its appliances, with a business projection of 2.7 billion yen (around R340 million) in sales this year.

Source: Nikkei Asia, The Next Web