Phison Electronics Corp (群聯電子), a designer of NAND flash memory controllers and modules, yesterday said its partnership with Toshiba Corp has not been impaired by disputes over the sales of Toshiba’s semiconductor business.
Toshiba, which holds a 10 percent stake in Phison, secured a seat on Phison’s nine-member board through a subsidiary, Toshiba Memory Corp, during an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting yesterday.
That dispersed speculation that Toshiba was considering selling its Phison stake to help alleviate its financial burden. The Japanese chipmaker is also a major NAND flash memorychip supplier to Phison.
Phison in April said that it would play a minor part in the consortium that wins the bid for the Japanese company’s chip unit to secure its long-term partnership with Toshiba.
“The strategic partnership between Phison and Toshiba is to be strengthened further via cross-shareholding as the companies are seeing supplementary effects in terms of technological development,” Phison founding chairman Pua Khein-seng (潘健成) said in a company statement.
The strong bonds, which have been in place for the past 15 years, will substantially enhance the companies’ competitiveness, as supply of NAND flash memory chips will continue to be under constraint over the next five years, given rapidly growing demand for memory space, Pua said.
Chip supply will not be able to keep pace with demand due to higher technological barriers, as most chipmakers are producing 3D NAND flash memory chips this year, he said.
With Toshiba’s support, Phison will have an advantage in sourcing more sufficient chips than its rivals, the company said.
Phison shares rose 1.14 percent to close at NT$356 in Taipei trading yesterday, underperforming the TPEX, which gained 1.44 percent. A total of 1.2 million shares of Phison were traded during the session, the Taipei Exchange’s data showed.
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