Spansion, the NOR flash manufacturer which bought Israeli NROM company Saifun last year, has hired Barclay's Capital to investigate ways of selling itself to another company, or entering a partnership with another company.
'These strategic alternatives would be designed to build on Spansion's position as a leading supplier of NOR flash memory by creating significantly greater scale and to provide Spansion's customers with a broader range of more cost effective memory solutions', says a statement today from Spansion.
Spansion said it has started talks on a possible restructuring of its balance sheet, and that it would be postponing the interest payments on some of its debt.
Recently Spansion said that it was suing Samsung as an initial step in utilising the expertise in IP licensing which it acquired with the Saifun purchase, to develop a revenue flow from licensing its trapped charge memory technology.
It has always been Spansion's contention that when the traditional form of flash memory reaches its technical limits at around the 22nm generation, the world will have to turn to Spansion's trapped charge technology where Spansion has a technical lead and a large IP portfolio.
Samsung, the world's largest manufacturer of flash memory, would be a possible acquirer of Spansion, though Samsung is said to have developed its own proprietary version of trapped charge technology. Toshiba is another possible acquirer.
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