Cash-hungry Sharp 'offering juicy stakes to US firms'

Sharp is in talks with US firms including Dell, Intel and Qualcomm to sell off bits and pieces of itself, it has been reported.

The Japanese firm is looking for a sizeable capital injection and is hoping to get as much as 20bn ($240m) from Dell and Intel and another smaller pile of cash from Qualcomm, folks whispered to the Wall Street Journal.

Sharp had been hoping that Foxconn would help it out, but the Taiwanese firm started backing out of a deal the pair made in August when Sharp reported disappointing results and its shares sank.

The company isn't expecting to anything better in the immediate future either, expecting a second straight year of losses. Its credit rating has been downgraded to junk status, signalling to markets that the firm is unlikely to be able to pay off debts.

Like Panasonic and Sony, Sharp is offloading any extras it can, selling assets like factories and money-hungry fringe businesses.

Sharp President Takashi Okuda has said he's counting on new liquid crystal displays made from indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) - which according to the firm do not use as much power as regular LCDs - with improved resolution to save the company. ®