On October 26, Sanyo Electric announced its consolidated financial results for the first half of FY2001. The company recorded decreased income and profit with sales down 2.6% from the same period last year to 1,031.484 billion yen and net profit down 68.4% to 6.397 billion yen. Sanyo was one of the few leading electronics makers in Japan that announced itself to be in black ink. Sanyo's electronic devices business, including semiconductors, LCD panels and electronic parts, and also its battery business performed unfavorably, as with its rival electronics makers. But sales increased in the audio-visual and information equipment business that accounts for approximately 40% of Sanyo's overall sales. Sales generated by the electronic devices business decreased by 16.1% from the same period last year down to 189.116 billion yen. Decrease of sales was the most drastic with LCD panels, down 49.6% to 20.929 billion yen. Semiconductor sales decreased by 9.9% down to 117.178 billion yen. Says Sanyo, "Custom-made chips for digital audio-visual equipment and signal processing LSIs for CD-R/RW equipment did well. But we xperienced great difficulties with memories, although the situation was not as bad as our rivals because we are not engaged in general-purpose DRAMs."

In the field of audio-visual and information equipment, telephone sets, including mobile handsets, and digital still cameras, including OEM products, performed well. Sales of telephone sets increased 62.3% from the same period last year to 112.869 billion yen and those of digital cameras 26.3% to 63.417 billion yen.