TOKYO,Japan's leading car audio equipment maker Clarion Co Ltd received an order to supply 200,000 car navigation systems to Nissan Motor Co Ltd for three new automobile models, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun daily said. Nissan, Japan's third-largest carmaker, will switch its car navigation supplier from a unit of Hitachi Ltd to Clarion, which already supplies Nissan with its car audio equipment, the newspaper reported on Sunday. Neither company was immediately available to comment. The new car models are to debut in the business year starting in April.

Clarion's deal is estimated to account for around 10 percent of total domestic car navigation system sales, which are forecast to increase 10 percent from 2001 to around two million units this year, the paper said. Clarion, owned 11.3 percent by Nissan, will also make car navigation equipment to serve as terminals for Nissan's new information service Carwings, to be launched in March. The new system to be installed for Nissan's high-end models will play DVD videos, respond to voice commands and read out e-mail messages, the paper said.