Japanese chipset manufacturer Renesas looks increasingly likely to sell its loss-making mobile phone chip business, acquired from Nokia in 2010 for $200 million.

“Overseas is our main focus,” president Tetsuya Tsurumaru told reporters in Tokyo yesterday, notes Reuters, without identifying the firms his company was speaking to.

A sale in Japan remained a possibility, he added, but declined to discuss whether any talks about a domestic deal were underway.

Only last week the company said it will decide in fiscal 2013 whether to sell the troubled mobile business.

Renesas, the world’s largest maker of microcontroller chips used in cars, has been in the red ever since buying the mobile unit and was forced to seek a $1.8 billion government-led bailout last year. The mobile chip division is part of its wholly owned subsidiary Renesas Mobile.

The world’s leading maker of microcontroller chips used in cars  will receive its state financing by the end of September, at which point it will be two-thirds owned by the taxpayer-funded Innovation Network Corp of Japan (INCJ).

Reuters notes that Renesas had been expected to join an all-Japanese merger of Panasonic’s and Fujitsu’s LSI chip units, which make microchips used in TVs, digital cameras and other consumer electronic products. It is believed that those talks are ongoing.