MONEY POURS INTO DEVELOPMENT OF NEW CONSUMER-DEVICE CHIPS
Reuters
January 1, 2001
TOKYO -- Anticipating brisk demand for chips used in increasingly sophisticated devices such as digital TVs and cameras, Sony Corp. and other Japanese chipmakers plan to maintain investment on plant and equipment at near-record levels in 2001.
Sony, the world's second-largest maker of consumer electronics, said last week its semiconductor investment is likely to exceed $885.8 million in the business year starting in April, an increase over this year's record level.
Separately, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the world's largest consumer-electronics maker, said it will begin building a plant next year in Japan to make chips for cellular phones, but the company did not say how much it would cost.
The Osaka-based giant, which produces goods under the Panasonic, National, Technics and Quasar brands, also said it will produce chips for digital video cameras and digital broadcast televisions from next December at a plant it is building in Niigata, northern Japan.
Matsushita did not specify its total planned investment next year on semiconductors. This year, its capital spending on chip production nearly tripled to $1.24 billion.
Fujitsu Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. said that they expect to maintain capital spending at current levels. But a spokesman for NEC Corp. said top executives of the world's second-largest chipmaker after Intel Corp. had indicated that it would be difficult to maintain the same level of investment next year. |
