Toshiba Announces Reorganization of Memory Business

18 December, 2001


Tokyo--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding to sell Dominion Semiconductor, L.L.C. to Micron Technology, Inc of the United States. The sale, scheduled for January 2002, will cover all of the assets of Dominion, a wholly owned Toshiba subsidiary based in Manassas, Virginia, including its land, buildings and DRAM production equipment. As a result, Toshiba will terminate its business in commodity DRAMs and gradually phase out their production at Yokkaichi Operations.

The NAND flash manufacturing equipment of FlashVision LLC, a joint venture between Toshiba and SanDisk Corporation based at Dominion, will be transferred to Yokkaichi Operations, which Toshiba will position as its global memory manufacturing site.

The company will also seek to enhance the cost structure of its memory assembly operations by outsourcing to third parties, including overseas assemblers. In conjunction with this move the future of DRAM assembly at Yokkaichi Toshiba Electronics will be reconsidered in June 2002, including the facility's potential liquidation.

Following these measures, all of Toshiba's memory operations, including business management, engineering and production control, will be centralized within Yokkaichi Operations by June 2002, in order to reinforce quick-decision-making and operating efficiency. However Toshiba will maintain development of core DRAM technology that is required for the advanced embedded DRAMs of system LSIs and systems on chips.

The company will focus on application-specific and high value-added memory products, including NAND flash, high-density NOR flash, FCRAMs and customized DRAMs, with Yokkaichi Operation as its global manufacturing site.

Promoted under the 01 Action Plan announced in August, these measures will establish a business structure better able to absorb dramatic market fluctuations and that will support Toshiba as it tries to secure profitability in its semiconductor business in fiscal year 2002.


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