Taiwan's third-largest memory chipmaker, Winbond Electronics Corp (
The new fab, to be located in the the Central Taiwan Science-based Industry Park (
"The ground-breaking ceremony will take place in the third quarter of this year and equipment will be moved in the third quarter of 2005," said Winbond spokesman Mike Liu (
"We will ramp up production in the second quarter of 2006," he said.
Possible partners for the fab could be Germany's Infineon Technologies AG or Japan's Sharp Inc, local Chinese-language media have speculated, but Liu would not confirm these reports.
"Discussions are ongoing and a candidate should emerge by the end of this quarter," he said.
One analyst said Winbond has been forced to build the fab to keep up with its competitors.
"The fab plan is something Winbond has to do or they will be the only DRAM [dynamic random-access memory] manufacturer without a 12-inch fab," said George Wu (吳裕良), an analyst at Primasia Securities Co in Taipei.
"It is slightly too late, but it is still OK, as Winbond will produce specialized chips," he said.
Winbond has gradually focused its memory-chip business on chips that are used for mobile phones and other handheld devices.
In the past the company made memory chips mainly for personal computers.
The Hsinchu-based company yesterday reported a better-than-expected profit for the final three months of last year.
It had a fourth-quarter profit of NT$211 million (US$6.34 million), compared with a loss of NT$1.9 billion in the same period in 2002. Its loss narrowed last year from NT$4.2 billion in 2002 to NT$1.1 billion.
Winbond president Chang Ching-chu (章青駒) told an investor conference yesterday that the company expects to make a profit in the first quarter this year, according to a Bloomberg report.
"Shipments will go up by 60 percent compared with the last quarter. The pseudo-SRAM [static random-access memory] chip is our most profitable product," the report said, citing Chang. Pseudo-SRAM chips are used to store memory in mobile phones.
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