South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc has offered to buy a stake in Toshiba Corp’s microchip business, as it seeks to expand its share of the global mobile and smart-devices markets.
Hynix, an Apple Inc supplier and the world’s second-largest computer memorychip maker, said in a filing yesterday that it had submitted a non-binding bid on Friday last week, without giving specifics.
It has offered to pay at least 2 trillion won (US$1.8 billion) for its envisioned stake, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said, declining to be identified talking about a private deal.
The Japanese nuclear-to-TVs conglomerate is trying to sell about a fifth of its semiconductor division to help repair a balance sheet facing billions of dollars in write-downs.
Hynix, looking to boost its mobile-storage business, has said it plans to invest about 7 trillion won this year on expanding capacity, particularly for NAND flash chips used in mobile devices.
The South Korean company, also a major producer of flash memory, might need the approval of antitrust regulators to complete the deal.
Beyond smartphones, Hynix and other microchip companies could also be looking to get in early on the ground floor of what is expected to be a thriving market for artificial intelligence-enabled devices in the home and office.
Those gadgets require bigger data storage and faster memory.
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