Toshiba says it's shifting its focus to more profitable chips used in devices such as mobile phones and game consoles instead of PCs, even if that means losing a bigger share of the overall semiconductor market.
"We don't care about market share," said Toshiba spokesman Makoto Yasuda. "Our focus is profitability." The company, which has licensed its NAND chip technology to Samsung for 11 years, posted its first profit in eight quarters in the January-to-March period and said it expects earnings to improve this fiscal year.
While Japanese chipmakers have slashed a combined 54,000 jobs in two years to cut costs and pare losses, downsizing hasn't been enough to keep pace with richer overseas rivals. Samsung, for one, surpassed Toshiba and STMicroelectronics NV to become the world's No. 2 chipmaker last year by investing in new factories that cost less to run.
To cement that position, Samsung is spending 61 percent of its 6.78 trillion won (US$5.7 billion) budget this year on new chipmaking equipment and plants.
Japanese companies, by contrast, have shrinking piles of cash to invest -- and they're spreading it among dozens of products spanning from memory chips and telecommunications equipment to factory machinery and vacuum cleaners.
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