Toshiba, SanDisk to invest $5.2 bn on new plant

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

YOKKAICHI, Japan, Aug 4: Toshiba Corp. and SanDisk Corp. will invest a total ofabout 600 billion yen (.2 billion) to build a new flash memory plant in Western Japan to meet growing demand, the Japanese company said on Friday.

Demand for NAND flash memory for use in digital electronic applications, including portable music players, mobile phones and memory cards, is on the rise worldwide.

Toshiba, the world's fourth-largest microchip maker, and SanDisk, the world's top supplier of flash memory data storage cards, will first spend about 300 billion yen on the new plant over two business years through March 2008. The new plant will start production in the October-December quarter of 2007 with a monthly processing capacity of 2,500 wafers. The firms then plan to boost capacity to 67,500 wafers by October-December 2008, Toshiba said.

The maximum capacity at the new plant, to be located in Western Japan's Mie prefecture, is estimated to come to 150,000 wafers a month, and the new plant will employ cutting-edge 56-nanometer process technology, it added.

Toshiba is the world's second-largest NAND-type flash memory chips behind Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and it swung to a quarterly profit in April-June, driven by strong demand for its NAND flash memory chips.

NAND flash chips' ability to retain data after power is shut off makes them an ideal storage device for portable electronics. They are widely used in digital cameras, photo-snapping phones and digital music players such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod.

Samsung held a 49 percent share in the global NAND flash market in January-March, followed by Toshiba with 25 percent and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. with 15 percent, according to research firm iSuppli.

Shares in Toshiba were down 1.22 percent at 728 yen after the news in a flat Tokyo stock market.

REUTERS

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