Elpida Memory Inc, the Japanese chipmaker being reorganized with government support, has sought US$500 million from 10 companies in the US, Taiwan and China as it faces about ¥122 billion (US$1.6 billion) in debt due by April, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
The chipmaker declined to comment on the newspaper report yesterday in an e-mail.
The Tokyo-based company also may ask Toshiba Corp for help, the newspaper reported without saying where it got the information.
Elpida and rival makers of DRAM chips lost a combined US$14 billion in the past three years as prices plunged and demand shifted toward smartphones and tablets that use flash memory chips, including those made by Toshiba.
“If Elpida becomes more competitive through structural reforms and rationalization, we might be able to help with our processing technology,” Toshiba president Norio Sasaki said yesterday at a New Year’s party for a Japanese business association in Tokyo. “We are not in such a situation yet.”
Japan’s government may push for integration between chipmaking operations at Elpida and Toshiba to improve competitiveness against South Korean rivals, the Chinese-language DigiTimes reported on Tuesday, citing industry officials it didn’t identify.
Shares of Elpida slumped 7.4 percent to close at ¥350 in Tokyo trading yesterday, bringing its decline in the past 12 months to 66 percent, compared with an 18 percent drop for the Nikkei 225 Stock Average.
Elpida had losses totaling about ¥287 billion during the past 10 fiscal years.
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