Close on the heels of struggling Japanese chipmaker Renesas' last-week statement that it will decide whether it should sell its mobile chip division in fiscal 2013, the company's new president Tetsuya Tsurumaru recently told reporters in Tokyo that the company is currently in talks with foreign companies about the sale of the mobile chip business which it acquired from Nokia three years back.

Noting that "Overseas is our (Renesas') main focus," Tsurumaru - who took over as the company's president on February 22 - said that the sale of its loss-making mobile chip business to a foreign firm was "one of the options we are looking at."

Tsurumaru also added alongside that the possibility of the sale of the mobile chip unit in Japan could also not be ruled out. However, he neither divulged the names of the foreign companies with which Renesas is in talks about the unit's sale, nor did he confirm whether any discussions were presently underway by the company on a domestic deal.

Renesas' decision to sell the mobile chip business is apparently rooted in the fact that, ever since the company's 2010 acquisition of the business from Nokia for $200 million, the unit has been in the red.

The unit was one of the most notable contributors to Renesas' losses which forced the company to seek a $1.6 billion government-led bailout which it cobbled together in December last year, to offset a bid by U. S. private equity firm KKR & Co LP.