Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (
The Hsinchu-based company's expansion plan came not long after the government had given it the green light for plans to set up a factory in China and was a reaction to the government's call to companies to increase their investment at home.
Powerchip received approval for a US$401 million project to set up a plant in China that would manufacture chips on old equipment, using less advanced technology.
SCIENCE PARKS
"The lands we have applied for at the Hsinchu and Central Taiwan Science Parks (中部科學園區), if approved smoothly, will be big enough to build four 12-inch wafer facilities," Powerchip spokesman Eric Tan (譚仲民) said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
However, Powerchip has no substantial plans in terms of schedule and spending for the new plants, yet, Tan said.
Tan dismissed the Chinese-language Commercial Times report, which said that Powerchip planned to spend NT$400 billion (US$12.27 billion) on building four new 12-inch wafer factories in Taiwan over the next three years.
JOINT VENTURE
Last month, Powerchip said it would form a joint venture with Japan's Elpida memory Inc to build four plants in Taiwan by pooling between NT$450 billion and NT$500 billion to manufacture computer memory chips, or dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.
Powerchip said early last year that it planned to build six 12-inch wafer factories over a five-year period, in addition to a vacant plant it purchased from local chipmaker Macronix International Co (旺宏), to quickly expand its capacity in order to meet growing demand following the sale of Microsoft Corp's Vista Windows operating system.
Market research iSuppli Corp yesterday said that revenue growth of DRAM chipmakers would slow down this year because of price erosion after unusually solid growth last year.
Overall, DRAM revenues are expected to expand by 11.3 percent to just under US$40 billion, up from the US$36.95 billion estimate for last year, according to iSuppli's latest forecast.
PRICE PLUNGE
This year chip prices may plunge 31 percent, as has been the case in recent years, on a 65 percent year-on-year increase in output, compared with the unusual 13 percent decline experienced last year, it said.
But, the researcher based in El Segundo, California, did not expect DRAM chipmakers to suffer much from the price plunges, because their margins had already improved substantially.
Powerchip shares dropped 1.36 percent to NT$21.65 yesterday, underperforming the 1.25 percent loss on the benchmark TAIEX index.
RSS