After 15 months of struggle for normalization, South Korea's No. 3 smartphone maker Pantech Co. officially set sail on Tuesday, with a vision to focus on budget smartphones, especially in the Asian market.

The move came more than a month after a Seoul court gave approval to a local consortium to take over Pantech. The company was placed under court receivership in August last year as it buckled under severe competition from Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. in South Korea.

The consortium, composed of South Korean telecom device maker Solid and optical manufacturer Optis, plans on expanding Pantech's presence outside the country and beefing up its budget smartphones.

An official from the consortium earlier said the new Pantech will seek to establish its production facilities overseas.

Sources said the new Pantech plans to ship 200,000 units of budget smartphones to Indonesia by the second half of 2016.

The consortium has launched SMA Solution Holdings, a special-purpose firm to manage the new company. Solid owns a 96 percent stake in the entity, and the remainder is held by Optis. (Yonhap)