The formal transfer of Fujitsu's hard disk drive business to Toshiba has been postponed to Oct. 1 pending approval from Chinese antitrust authorities, a person familiar with the proceedings told Dow Jones Newswires.

Samsung Electronics and Toshiba said they have received notices from the US Justice Department informing them that an antitrust investigation into the flash-memory chip market had ended.

Back-end production capacity will be reduced at a plant in Mie Prefecture, Toshiba's main NAND flash memory production site, and shifted to a subsidiary in Thailand. Some procedures will also be outsourced to a foundry in Taiwan.

Toshiba has said it aimed to expand its energy, healthcare and environment-related businesses as it targets a strong recovery in earnings within the next three years.

Toshiba has begun volume shipments of solid-state drives ranging up to 512GB in size. The drives are built on a 43nm manufacturing process using multi-level cell (MLC) technology.

Toshiba has slashed a forecast for operating profit and sales next fiscal year made before the global recession drove the company to post its first net loss in seven years. It will also cut capital spending to 1.1 trillion yen for 2009 to 2011, from 1.64 trillion yen in the preceding three-year period.

Toshiba has reported a wider net loss in its fiscal first quarter due to restructuring costs and losses at its chip operations, as the electronics market's uncertain outlook continued to cast a shadow over the firm's earnings.

Apple said that it has made a US$500 million prepayment to Toshiba for flash memory chips and indicated the market is stabilizing. Intel, which makes flash chips jointly with Micron, is also seeing a recovery in pricing.

NEC is considering raising funds to strengthen its capital base, which has suffered during the economic downturn, according to sources familiar with matter.

Exactly a year and five months after Toshiba brought an end to the high-definition disc format war, the Japanese consumer electronics company confirmed its plans to produce its own Blu-ray Disc player.

The 1.8-inch hard disk market appears to be dying. Already, the market is down to two manufacturers, Toshiba and Samsung, and when the latter announced its new 250GB, US$200 1.8-inch HDD last week, the announcement had a rather stunning omission: IDE and SATA.

NEC Electronics, which has inked an integration contract with fellow chip maker Renesas Technology, is eyeing either Toshiba or Panasonic as its partner in developing an advanced semiconductor system, President Junshi Yamaguchi said.

Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest memory chipmaker, said on Monday it had signed a cross licence deal on semiconductors with Japan's Toshiba.

Toshiba has said it will shoulder US$307 million in restructuring costs from shutting down its old system chip and discrete chip lines as it seeks to unload losses.

Japan's Toshiba plans to raise its chip production in July to levels not seen since it implemented output cuts in January, national broadcaster NHK has reported, in a move that would reflect an improvement in nationwide output levels.

Japanese electronics giant Toshiba plans to reduce fixed costs 10% more than previously announced, a news report said on Sunday.

Japan's top chipmaker Toshiba has said it will end production of mobile phones in Japan due to plummeting demand amid an economic slump. The company said its only domestic plant for mobile phones will halt operations in October.

Electronic manufacturers, including Toshiba and Hitachi, are planning to consolidate flat-panel television factories outside Japan and expand outsourcing to cut costs, the Nikkei business daily reported.

After a massive capex splurge on its semiconductor division over the last three years, Toshiba is radically cutting back its chip investments over the coming year.

Nakaya Microdevices, Amkor Technology and Toshiba Tuesday announced that they have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding expressing their intent to form a joint venture in Japan that will provide system LSI assembly and testing services.

Chip-making companies Renesas Technology and NEC Electronics have agreed to integrate their operations by April next year, in a move that will form an entity surpassing Toshiba as Japan's largest chip maker, according to reports Friday.

Toshiba has denied a newspaper report that it will increase capital by 500 billion yen (US$5 billion) this year to strengthen its semiconductor business.

Shares of Toshiba opened down 6.9% on Monday after weekend reports that it plans to raise about US$5 billion in capital to bolster its finances, weakened by its loss-making chip operations and tax costs.

Japanese electronics giant Toshiba has said it is to cut a further 3,900 temporary jobs by March 2010 to cope with the global economic downturn. The news came as it said it expected to report a net loss of 350bn yen (US$3.5bn) for the year to March 2009.