Reports from the Kyodo news agency suggest that Toshiba may postpone plans to build a a couple of NAND flash fabs that were due to come on-stream in 2010.
Earlier this year, Toshiba was saying it would invest to become the No.1 player in NAND flash by overtaking Samsung. With a 27 per cent market share to Samsung's 40 per cent that was a tall order for Toshiba, requiring a massive increase in capacity.
One of the two new fabs was to have been built with its flash partner SanDisk. Now it looks as if steeper than expected NAND price falls, and a stronger than expected effort by the Intel-Micron joint venture, IM Flash, has persuaded Toshiba to invest according to market conditions rather than to achieve the glory of being the No.1 player.
Earlier this week, IM Flash announced an early move to 34nm manufacturing, while Toshiba is still ramping up 40nm production. This will give the IM Flash a cost advantage over Toshiba for as long as the imbalance in process technologies lasts.
The Toshiba-SanDisk plan had been to start building the two fabs in the prefectures of Iwate and Mie in 2009, with 2010 targeted as the date for them to come on-stream.
Postponing the start of building the two fabs will mean that Toshiba won't spend its current financial year planned capex budget of $3.9bn.
US analysts iSuppli are forecasting a 14 per cent decline in NAND revenues for this year, and a 15 per cent decline for next year.
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