Western Digital on Thursday posted December quarter sales that edged Wall Street estimates, and provided better-than-expected guidance for the March quarter-but the disk-drive and flash memory chip company's shares nonetheless were falling in late trading.

Japan's Kioxia Holdings, the world's second largest maker of flash memory chips and formerly known as Toshiba Memory, plans an initial public offering as early as September, weekly financial magazine Diamond reported on Thursday.

With the market for flash memory only expected to grow, Western Digital CEO David Goeckeler says the US chipmaker sees Japan's Kioxia Holdings as a long-term partner that is key to staying competitive against big Asian rivals.

Firms accelerate their decline by selling and sharing key technology with the PRC

Kioxia Holdings, the world's second-largest maker of flash memory chips, warned on Thursday that tighter U.S. restrictions on Huawei could cause memory chip oversupply and drive down market prices.

Kioxia Holdings, the world's second-largest maker of flash memory chips, will list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Oct. 6 in an initial public offering worth up to $3.6 billion, a regulatory filing showed on Thursday.

Japan's Toshiba Corp said on Monday it planned to sell down its 40.2% stake in flash memory chips firm Kioxia Holdings and will return a majority of the net proceeds to shareholders.

A Hong Kong-based activist investor in Toshiba has asked the Japanese conglomerate to sell its entire stake in Kioxia Holdings when the flash memory chip firm is listed in an IPO that could raise up to $32 billion, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters.

Western Digital continues to assess the impact of this event and expects the incident to result in a reduction of WD's flash wafer availability of approximately 6 exabytes, the majority of which is expected to be contained in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020, namely the period from July 2019 until September.

Samsung now expects bit growth of less than 20% for DRAM and a rise of 30% for NAND flash.

With the SSD and NAND flash memory markets booming, Western Digital has made the tough decision to shut down its HDD (hard disk drive) manufacturing factory in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia by the end of 2019.

Samsung plans to invest US$7 billion over the next three years for the expansion project.

Intel intends to expand its partnership with Beijing-backed Tsinghua Unigroup by providing NAND flash memory chips as soon as this year, according to industry sources.

Western Digital gave strong profit forecasts for the current quarter and the full year on Thursday and said the flash memory market would grow faster this year, easing investor jitters that the surging demand for memory chips was fading.

Price increases for both DRAM and NAND flash memory are raising the outlook for the overall semiconductor market.

Huawei had had a difficult time when it installed different NAND flash chips into its strategic Smartphone called P10 during first half of 2017. Into a same product, it installed eMMC and UFS standard storage device. Unexpectedly level of dissatisfaction from consumers who purchased P10 equipped with eMMC increased heavily. Industries believe that Huawei made a bad move by failing to obtain NAND flash memories.

Everspin announced it is sampling a Gbit MRAM chip and will be in production this year with 1-2 Gbyte cards based on its 256 Mbit chip. The news at the Flash Memory Summit here marks a small but significant advance for a growing collection of persistent memories at an event focused on the still rising market for mainstream NAND.

Toshiba's board will meet on Wednesday to consider offers for its chip unit from Western Digital and Taiwan's Foxconn in addition to a bid from a consortium that was previously favorite, a source familiar with the matter said. Toshiba is scrambling to sell its flash memory unit to cover losses from its bankrupt US nuclear business Westinghouse.

Western Digital won a temporary US court order on Tuesday saying that Toshiba must allow Western Digital's employees to access databases and chip samples as part of a joint venture with Toshiba around flash memory chip plants in Japan.

It has been confirmed that SK Hynix started mass-producing 4th generation (72-layer) 3D NAND flash wafers and achieved ?？olden yield', which had been SK Hynix's biggest obstacle. Its solution product that uses its own controller and firmware passed certifications.

VerHeul most recently was senior VP of corporate engineering at SanDisk, where he was responsible for developing a broad array of flash products.

Western Digital is considering fresh investment to build another flash memory chip plant in western Japan in an effort to show its commitment to the country, a source familiar with the matter said.

Western Digital has warned Toshiba that the proposed sale of its memory business contravenes the terms of their flash foundry joint venture.

The complaint specifically refers to Toshiba flash memory chips and products containing such chips-including memory cards, solid-state drives, wearable devices, digital camcorders, mobile devices, advanced audiovisual systems, car navigation systems, computers, servers, and other consumer electronic devices-as infringing products.

Toshiba shareholders agreed to split off its prized NAND flash memory unit on Thursday, paving the way for a sale to raise at least $9 billion to cover US nuclear unit charges that threaten the conglomerate's future.

Samsung Electronics said Tuesday its chip factory under construction in southern Seoul is expected to start production in the first half of 2017 as scheduled. The new line is expected to focus on the production of 3-D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory.

As major player Toshiba's flash memory business is up for sale, global chipmakers are weighing their chances of competing against Samsung, which has a runaway lead in 3D NAND flash technology.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise said it would buy data storage provider Nimble Storage Inc for $1.09 billion in cash, to expand its presence in the fast-growing flash storage business.

Toshiba wants investment funds including Bain Capital to buy a stake in its flash memory business rather than industry peers such as Micron Technology because doing so will speed up the planned sale, a source said.

A non-volatile memory technology based on carbon nanotubes that's poised for commercialization in 2018 is expected to be more disruptive to enterprise storage, servers and consumer electronics than flash memory, according to a new report from BCC Research.

Samsung Electronics plans to mass produce 64-layer NAND flash memory for the first time in the world early in 2017, while SK hynix plans to mass produce 72-layer NAND flash in the second half of 2017 jumping over 64-layer NAND flash.

SK Hynix, one of South Korea's leading manufacturers of memory semiconductors, plans to leapfrog rival Samsung Electronics to mass produce the most-advanced generation of NAND flash - chips that feature 72 layers of data-storing cells.

In a regulatory filing with the Financial Supervisory Service, SK Hynix said, "We are looking into various options, including setting up a joint venture with Seagate Technology, to strengthen the mid and long-term competitiveness of our nonvolatile storage flash chips. But no decision has yet been made."

Samsung was Apple's main supplier for the iPhones from the very beginning, making the A-series processors and supplying both NAND flash and DRAM memory chips.

Japan's Toshiba expects to post a bigger first-half profit than it previously forecast, boosted by rising flash memory chip prices and strong chip demand from Chinese smartphone manufacturers.

Tech giant Samsung Electronics is gearing up to fully operate a production line for 3D NAND flash memory at its plant in Hwaseong City, Gyeonggi Province. Considering the one-month period to build the equipment and tools, it is expected that the facility will likely be in full operation around the end of 2016.

Toshiba is planning to start the manufacturing of the world's first 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips in the third quarter of 2016 with Samsung Electronics being expected to release the same type of products in the following quarter.

Toshiba and US partner Western Digital will commit 1.5 trillion yen or US$14.6 billion over three years toward stepping up flash memory production at their jointly run Japanese plant, in a bid to widen global market share, Nikkei reported.

The announcement comes after Korean news media reported that Samsung is planning to invest around KRW25 trillion (US$21.2 billion)- some claimed KRW2.5 trillion - to beef up its production lines for 3D NAND flash memory in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association has announced the publication of several key updates to the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) family of standards. These include JESD220C UFS version 2.1, JESD223C UFSHCI version 2.1, JESD220-1A UFS UME version 1.1 and JESD223-1A UFSHCI UME version 1.1.