Toshiba Corp, the world's second-biggest maker of flash memory chips, and SanDisk Corp are building a new memory-chip plant in Japan to meet a rapidly growing demand for the storage technology used in portable digital music players and mobile phones, the companies said yesterday.
Japanese electronics maker Toshiba and California-based SanDisk, the world's largest supplier of flash memory data storage card products, plan to start construction of the new facility at Toshiba's Yokkaichi plant in central Japan, they said in a statement.
The two companies have had plants to produce NAND flash memory -- used in USB drives and memory cards for digital cameras -- at Yokkaichi since last year, and have boosted the facility's capacity to meet market demand. Yesterday's announcement reflects anticipated need for 2008 and beyond, they said.
"We will maintain leadership in the market through continued proactive capital investments," said Masashi Muromachi, Toshiba corporate senior vice president.
"This demonstrates our optimism in the continuing growth in demand for our products in consumer electronics and handsets in the years ahead, as well as our confidence in the continuing future competitiveness of the Toshiba-SanDisk partnership," SanDisk chief executive Eli Harari said.
Construction on the new plant will begin in August, Toshiba said in a statement yesterday. The new facility, the fourth one at the location, will start production of the chips on 300-millimeter wafers by December 2007.
"Detailed investment plans will be decided at a later date," said Makoto Yasuda, a Toshiba spokesman. The new factory, called Fab 4, will probably be similar to the Fab 3 facility built before it, he said.
Toshiba currently makes 30,000 wafers a month at its Fab 3 factory and plans to expand the production to 70,000 wafers by October, Yasuda said. Toshiba and SanDisk had split investment in the third factory equally, he said, without giving further details.
Spot prices of NAND flash memory chips, which store data in electronics such as Apple Computer Inc's iPod Nano music players, probably won't sustain their rally, Taiwan-based Dramexchange.com (
Prices of the chip have surged amid a temporary shortage of semiconductor components known as thin small outline packages, or TSOP, resulting in a "NAND shortage illusion," Dramexchange analyst Judy Chen wrote in a note to clients dated Tuesday.
"This false shortage illusion will not last over a week," Chen said in a weekly report. "We believe this is only a temporary mismatch of supply and demand."
Spot prices of the 2-gigabit NAND chip, which had fallen 69 percent during the first three months of the year, rose 8.6 percent on Tuesday after gaining a record 11 percent the previous day, according to Dramexchange, Asia's biggest chip spot market.
Samsung Electronics Co, Toshiba and Hynix Semiconductor Inc are the world's largest producers of NAND.
The domestic unit of the Chinese-owned, Dutch-headquartered chipmaker Nexperia BV will soon be able to produce semiconductors locally within China, according to two company sources. Nexperia is at the center of a global tug-of-war over critical semiconductor technology, with a Dutch court in February ordering a probe into alleged mismanagement at the company. The geopolitical tussle has disrupted supply chains, with some carmakers reportedly forced to cut production due to chip shortages. Local production would allow Nexperia’s domestic arm, Nexperia Semiconductors (China) Ltd (安世半導體中國), to bypass restrictions in place since October on the supply of silicon wafers — etched with tiny components to
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings Ltd has applied for regulatory approval to acquire the Taiwan operations of Germany-based Delivery Hero SE's Foodpanda in a deal valued at about US$600 million. Grab submitted the filing to the Fair Trade Commission on Friday last week, with the transaction subject to regulatory review and approval, the company said in a statement yesterday. Its independent governance structure would help foster a healthy and competitive market in Taiwan if the deal is approved, Grab said. Grab, which is listed on the NASDAQ, said in the filing that US-based Uber Technologies Inc holds about 13 percent of
Taiwan is open to joining a global liquefied natural gas (LNG) program if one is created, but on the condition that countries provide delivery even in a scenario where there is a conflict with China, an energy department official said yesterday. While Taiwan’s priority is to have enough LNG at home, the nation is open to exploring potential strategic reserves in other countries such as Japan or South Korea, Energy Administration Deputy Director-General Chen Chung-hsien (陳崇憲) said. While the LNG market does not have a global reserve for emergencies like that of oil, the concept has been raised a few times —
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday received government approval to deploy its advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process at its second fab currently under construction in Japan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a news release. The ministry green-lit the plan for the facility in Kumamoto, which is scheduled to start installing equipment and come online in 2028 with a monthly production capacity of 15,000 12-inch wafers, the ministry said. The Department of Investment Review in June 2024 authorized a US$5.26 billion investment for the facility, slated to manufacture 6- to 12nm chips, significantly less advanced than 3nm process. At a meeting with
RSS