Toshiba Corp, the world's second-largest maker of NAND flash-memory chips, aims to overtake Samsung Electronics Co as the biggest producer of the semiconductors next year, president Atsutoshi Nishida said.
Sales of the chips, which store songs and pictures in digital cameras, mobile phones and music players, will expand as higher communication speeds allow devices to save more data, Nishida said. He spoke at an opening ceremony for a flash-memory line at the company's factory in Yokkaichi, central Japan.
"The goal is a positive," said Takeo Miyamoto, who has a "buy" rating on Toshiba's stock as an analyst at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets in Tokyo. "Toshiba is not the kind of company to pay lip service."
Toshiba and partner SanDisk Corp are increasing output to meet demand. Tokyo-based Toshiba, Japan's biggest chipmaker, said in July it expects to meet 75 percent of orders for NAND this quarter, down from 80 percent three months earlier.
The Japanese chipmaker had a 28 percent share of the global NAND flash market in the three months ended June 30, trailing Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung's 46 percent, according to researcher ISuppli Corp. Hynix Semiconductor Inc was in third place with 15 percent.
Toshiba in June said it is speeding up plans to increase production of the chips by about six months to meet demand from mobile-phone makers. The company will process 60,000 wafers a month, compared with its original target of 35,000, at its fourth plant in Yokkaichi by the end of June next year. That compares with a previous schedule for the quarter ending December next year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained