Japanese firms may team on chips
news.com
By Bloomberg News
Special to CNET News.com
January 11, 1999, 10:25 a.m. PT
Toshiba, Japan's second-largest microchip maker, said it may form an alliance
with Sony, the world's No. 2 consumer electronics maker, and Fujitsu to develop
microchips.
Toshiba Vice President Koichi Suzuki said his company would welcome a three-way
alliance, allowing the companies to cut costs and shorten development times for devices
such as logic chips, used to power future generations of consumer electronic products.
"There would be great merit for us in linking up also with Sony, which is strong in
consumer products, if it fits alongside our existing programs, and if Fujitsu were to agree,"
Suzuki said. "It's fully possible."
Japanese and foreign chipmakers are teaming up to spread the cost of developing smaller,
more powerful and sophisticated chips as the brains and memory of digital consumer
electronics.
The three companies already have separate two-way chip development agreements with
one another, and Toshiba said on Friday it has developed the world's smallest dynamic
random- access memory chip with IBM and Siemens AG.
Demand for "system-on-a-chip" devices running future products such as wristwatches
containing mobile phones is expected to balloon in the next few years. That'll help the
overall world logic chip market to swell to about $35.2 billion in 2000 from $21.6 billion in
1997, said the Semiconductor Industry Association.
Growing web of alliances
Existing arrangements between the companies mean that "the base is there to talk about"
further partnerships, said Fujitsu spokeswoman Yuri Momomoto.
The benefits of pooling technology and cooperating with other companies lie in "cutting
development costs and times to market," said Momomoto.
Fujitsu, Japan's No. 1 computer maker, and Toshiba, which is also Japan's largest maker
of notebook computers, agreed last month to share the burden of developing high capacity
1 gigabit dynamic random-access memory chips, for use in personal computers and digital
consumer electronics from 2002. |
