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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StanX Long who wrote (9529)	4/21/2003 3:43:28 AM
From: StanX Long	Respond to of 95502

OK, most of my post maybe dull, but here is a bit of good new, Stan. Sony Set to Splurge on Microchip Spending story.news.yahoo.com TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp (news - web sites), the world's largest consumer electronics maker, is set to unveil plans on Monday for a new round of spending on chipmaking plants as it gears up for the next generation of game machines and home electronics. The company's plans, to be announced at a news conference at 4 p.m. (0700 GMT), are widely expected to include an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in a cutting-edge chip plant on the drawing board at Toshiba Corp, Japan's largest chipmaker. Toshiba said on Monday its new plant, due to come on stream during the business year starting in April of next year, would make chips for Sony's PlayStation game machine, although it declined to comment on how much Sony might invest in the plant. Business newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported at the weekend that the Sony group would invest 40-50 billion yen ($334-$418 million), or 20-25 percent of the cost, in a new Toshiba chip facility in southwest Japan. Sony President Kunitake Ando, Ken Kutaragi, head of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc, the wholly owned Sony unit that designs and makes the PlayStation, and Toshiba executive vice president Yoshihide Fujii will attend the news conference. Financial analysts and executives at chip equipment makers have also said Sony's game unit may invest in a new state-of-the-art plant of its own at a complex near Nagasaki that currently makes chips for the PlayStation. Sony is sharpening its focus on semiconductors, which it considers vital for keeping ahead of rivals as digital home electronics from game machines to TV sets take on sophisticated capabilities such as high-speed Internet connections. Sony Computer Entertainment says about 50-60 percent of the value of a PlayStation 2 (news - web sites) game console is in its semiconductors. CHIPPING IN Sony and its game subsidiary are also working with Toshiba and International Business Machines Corp on a new microprocessor, code-named "cell," that aims to put the processing power of supercomputer into game machines and home electronics. The chip, set to debut in 2005, is expected to be used in the next generation of PlayStations, which in the current generation have trounced rival machines such as Microsoft Corp's Xbox (news - web sites) and are a vital profit engine for Sony. The Sony group has already spent 84.5 billion yen on a joint plant with Toshiba in Oita on the southern island of Kyushu that makes microprocessors for the hit PlayStation 2. Toshiba unveiled plans in December to build another plant at the site, due to begin production in the fiscal year starting in April 2004, that will use dinner plate-sized 300 mm (12-inch) wafers yielding twice as many chips as the standard 200 mm (8 inch) variety, cutting costs by up to 30 percent. Toshiba has repeatedly said it would be able to fund from its own resources the nearly $3 billion cost of two new chip plants -- the Oita facility and a memory chip plant in central Japan -- but analysts have said it would need to tap Sony and other partners to share the heavy cost burden. The new Oita plant would be able to process up to 25,000 silicon wafers per month measuring 300 mm in diameter, compared with 15,000 at the 200mm-wafer plant operated jointly with Sony. Although several analysts said the report was not a surprise, Sony's shares dipped modestly on Monday, trading 0.77 percent lower at 3,850 yen in late afternoon trade. Toshiba stock was up 1.23 percent at 328 yen. The Tokyo Stock Exchange's electrical machinery index IELEC.was up 0.74 percent. ($1=119.67 yen)