Flash Alliance: Toshiba and SanDisk to build a Flash memory manufacturing plant

Toshiba Corp. and SanDisk Corp. have announced that they are forming a joint venture. These two companies would be building a multibillion-dollar factory for flash memory chips.

This joint venture would help the two companies compete with Samsung in the flash memory market. These flash memory modules are nowadays used in every other electronic device like the digital music players (iPod, Creative Zen etc.), mobile phones and digital cameras etc.

Samsung is currently the market leader in the supplies of these flash memory chips and both Toshiba and SanDisk would want to have a share of this lucrative market.

This new factory would be built at Toshiba’s Yokkaichi plant in central Japan. Construction is due to begin sometime next month and they expect the production of this NAND flash memory chips sometime in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Their joint venture company is being called Flash Alliance Ltd. and Toshiba holds a 50.1 percent share in the company. SanDisk owns rest of the share.

This is not the first joint venture company formed in the recent times to make Flash memory chips. Recently Micron Technology Inc. and Intel Corp. announced a similar venture to start making flash memory modules.

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