Mitsubishi CEO Takao Kato laid out his company’s new strategy during its annual shareholders meeting recently, saying that the carmaker will move forward by focusing less on huge global markets where the brand isn’t particularly strong.
While Kato didn’t mention North America or the U.S. by name, the company did later confirm that it does indeed consider the United States a mega-market, just like Europe or China, reports Autonews.
Under its previous plan dubbed Drive for Growth, Mitsubishi had specifically flagged North America and China as two of its main regions. The new plan is called Selection and Concentration.
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“Even though we increased sales volume in the megamarkets, we have not yet achieved the level of profit we expected,” stated Kato. “We aim to increase sales in the regions where we can offer our core products. We will gradually reduce our commitment to megamarkets.”
The Japanese carmaker will double down its efforts in regions such as Southeast Asia and Oceania, while diverting more R&D resources into the types of vehicles that are popular there, like pickup trucks, crossovers and vans.
In terms of its group dynamic, while Mitsubishi will focus its efforts on the aforementioned regions, Nissan will take the lead in the U.S. and China, while Renault will do the same but for Europe.
In the fiscal year that ended in March, Mitsubishi’s volume in North America dropped 8% to 160,000 units, while in Europe it declined 9% to 215,000. Even though numbers also went down in Southeast Asia by 9%, the carmaker still topped the regional ranking with 290,000 cars.
As for the United States, Mitsubishi’s sales climbed 2.5% last year to 121,0446 units.
