NEC Corp. is negotiating with several prospective buyers for Technologias NEC de Mexico S.A. de C.V., a cellular phone unit in Mexico, with a deal expected to be reached soon, an NEC spokesman said Friday.

The planned sale is part of the Japanese electronic giant's strategy of consolidating and integrating its overseas manufacturing plants in order to make more effective use of resources, the spokesman said.

The Mexican unit was launched in 1989.

The business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported in its Friday morning edition that NEC will sell the Mexican unit and seven other overseas telecommunications equipment plants over the next two years as part of efforts to concentrate resources in areas such as next-generation communication devices and digital appliances. But the NEC spokesman denied that the company is considering the sale of the seven other overseas plants.

The seven other plants cited in the Nikkei report are in Argentina, Australia, Mexico, the Philippines, Portugal, Thailand and Vietnam.

The business daily said NEC will likely sell the plants to local manufacturers and companies that make products for other firms, known as electronics manufacturing service firms.

The newspaper cited sharp declines in profitability at overseas personal computer and telecommunications equipment manufacturing units as the motivating factor behind the planned sales.

The paper also said NEC will turn 13 of its major domestic manufacturing subsidiaries -- which produce PCs, printers, cellphones and other communications equipment -- into EMS firms in four to five years.

NEC expects them to generate 30 percent of its external source revenue within five years and eventually plans to let them go public, making them independently accountable for their operations, it added.