Toshiba, which made a massive bet on NAND flash, is now facing some difficult financial choices.
Toshiba, the inventor of flash memory and the No.2 NAND flash player, set out to build enough capacity to overtake Samsung, the No.1 player when Toshiba's market share was 28 per cent and Samsung's was 45 per cent.
Back in September 2007, when opening an 80,000 wafer-a-month new fab to accomplish this ambition, Toshiba's President, Atsutoshi Nishida, stated: "The Yokkaichi plant is the most important flash memory factory on which our company is betting its future."
Nishida added that the company aimed to overtake Samsung in 2008 as the world's largest manufacturer of NAND flash.
It was a stupendously ambitious aspiration and has ended with Toshiba in debt to the tune of $20bn, a loss of $3bn for FY 2008, and a share price down 70 per cent this year to reach a 20 year low.
While Toshiba's market share in NAND for 2008 was 28 per cent and Samsung's just over 40 per cent.
Now Toshiba is said to be contemplating a share issue to refresh its capital base. The expectation is that it will try to raise around $3bn. If the share issue goes ahead, it is expected to cause the company's share price to fall another 40 per cent.
In January Nishida said Toshiba would be back in profit after he had cut $300m in costs and re-focussed the corporation on broadcasting and power generation infrastructure. The semiconductor division would be re-organised, said Nishida.
See also: Analysis - Nerves of steel for the NAND players
See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Samsung Electronics, a roundup of content on three main areas of the technology giant's development: memory chips, LCD displays and mobile phone technology.