A recent report on the PV-Tech site has revealed that German engineering company Bosch has announced its decision to abandon its solar energy business which, as per the company, will no longer be able to remain economically viable; thanks largely to overcapacity in the industry as well as immense price pressure.

Bosch's Friday announcement about abandoning its solar energy business is apparently an upshot of the fact that lower subsidies, declining sales, and increasingly stiff price competition particularly from Chinese manufacturers - have severely hit the solar power industry.

According to the announcement by Bosch, the production of the company's products like solar cells, wafers and modules, will be stopped at the beginning of 2014. The company's plans to construct a new plant in Malaysia will also be abandoned, and its plant in Venissieux, France, will be sold.

About Bosch's decision to shut down its solar energy division - which has nearly 3,000 employees; and lost approximately 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in 2012 -, Volkmar Denner, chairman of the board of management at Robert Bosch, said that over the last few months, Bosch has "comprehensively examined every aspect of its solar business."

Further elaborating that the company has "considered the latest technological advances, cost-reduction potential, and strategic alignment" and even talked with potential partners, Denner said: "None of these possibilities resulted in a solution for the solar energy division that would be economically viable over the long term. We deeply regret this."