Business
trend
The
Japanese semiconductor industry is in the middle of restructuring that involves
not only the troubled Elpida Memory jointly developed by NEC and Hitachi in
1999 but also leading companies. Renesas Electronics, Fujitsu, and Panasonic are
negotiating with a view to integrating their semiconductor operations. With the
investment from Innovative Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), a
private-public investment fund, the three companies will establish a company
specializing in the design of semiconductor. If the restructuring plan
materializes, only two companies, the new company and Toshiba, will produce system
LSIs in Japan. The four concerns are scheduled to reach an agreement by the end
of March.
The new
company will develop the system LSI for vehicles and smartphones by combining the
image processing and communication technologies to be provided by the three
companies. It specializes in designing, and a new company to be established by
the INCJ and Global Foundries in California of the U.S. will specialize in production.
The new company for the production will reportedly purchase a production plant
from each of Elpida, Renesas, and Fujitsu. Because the requirements of
automakers and electronics makers are diverse, semiconductor producers have to
produce a wide variety of products in small quantity. Therefore, restructuring
is inevitable because continuous investment of 100 billion yen is vital per
plant is required to survive. The world semiconductor market grew 18.7% on a
year-on-year basis to about 5,950 billion yen in 2010.
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