Fujitsu to Buy Spansion’s Japan Chip Plants

Fujitsu will purchase two chip plants in Japan from Spansion Japan, a flash memory chip maker in which it holds a stake, the companies said Thursday.

Fujitsu will pay 17 billion yen (US$145 million) to buy Spansion’s JV1 and JV2 factories, which are in the city of Aizu-Wakamatsu in northeast Japan, where Fujitsu already operates its own chip factory.

Fujitsu will use the plants to produce flash memory embedded microcontrollers, it said. Such chips are used in automotive and consumer electronics applications, and Fujitsu said it expects the market for the devices to grow.

The company will also keep producing some flash memory chips at the factories for the time being, it said.

Spansion began life as a joint venture company between Fujitsu and Advanced Micro Devices, before listing its stock on the Nasdaq stock market in the United States late last year. It raised about US$506 million in the public offering, which reduced Fujitsu and AMD’s shareholdings to minority status.

-Martyn Williams, IDG News Service (Tokyo Bureau)

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