Business

In pursuit of more agile management, Panasonic Corp. announced it will completely absorb Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. and Panasonic Electric Works Co., Ltd. and will acquire these two listed subsidiaries through takeover bids.

CEATEC Japan 2010, Japan's largest electronics show, will be held from October 5 to 9 at Makuhari, in the suburbs of Tokyo. Hit by not only the global recession but also by a typhoon that struck bang in the middle of last year's show, the event ended up with 150,000 visitors, about 3/4 of the previous year's attendance. For this year, the CEATEC organizer is expecting about 200,000 visitors, the same level as that of the peak year of 2007.

Elpida Memory, Inc. has settled a pending diversification into the flash memory business by forming an alliance with Spansion Inc., which includes joint development of NAND technology and products and foundry services for the US company.

The Committee of High-purity Silicon, a wafer industry organization consisting of the world's major wafer manufacturers, revised the forecast of this year's single-crystal wafer production in Japan from 8,265 tons issued last February to 8,624 tons, reflecting brisk production in the first half of this year. Accordingly, production is expected to increase 35.9% from 2009, 5.9 percentage points up from 30% in the February forecast.

The long-rumored sale of the semiconductor unit of Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. has been settled with ON Semiconductor Corp. The US company will purchase the unit for US$367 million by the end of this year.

Toshiba Corp. and SanDisk have jointly announced that SanDisk will participate in the operation of Toshiba's new NAND fab, whose construction has just started, just as SanDisk has been partnering Toshiba for the NAND fabs currently in operation.

Targeting China, which is expected to become the world's largest TV market this year, Toshiba Corp. announced the establishment of a joint venture sales company, Toshiba Visual Products (China) Co., Ltd., with TCL Corp., one of China's leading consumer electronics manufacturers.

ST Microelectronics' insufficient supply of custom chips to Hitachi, Ltd. has triggered the halting of production at four car plants of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. in Japan, media reported. Hitachi has been assembling engine control units (ECUs) for Nissan using ST Micro's chip but supply of the chip fell short of the contracted amount, according to reports.

Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. and Toppan Printing Co., Ltd., the two largest printing companies in Japan, have proposed establishing the Association for E-publishing Business Solution, taking the initiative in preparing e-book production and distribution infrastructure. The two companies are organizing the association's inaugural meeting scheduled for July 27.

Aiming to launch a home-use energy storage systems business, Panasonic Corp. has started field testing a combination of solar panel modules and storage battery systems, employing 18650 lithium-ion battery cells, at its offices.