Toshiba certainly is looking to invest in the future growth of the flash market....in a sea of Billions targeting R&D, what is it worth to settle, what to them, might appear as a nuisance suit....

Love the numbers in these markets...just for further grasping of what markets a flash portfolio could be a part of...

Toshiba forecasts NAND, OLED expansion

"We've got on the right track of sustained growth with profit," said Atsutoshi Nishida, president and CEO of Toshiba, in announcing its mid-term plan.

Toshiba is forecasting growth of ¥2.5 trillion ($21 billion) by fiscal 2010, with sales totaling ¥9.5 trillion ($79.8 billion). Profitability is also forecast to jump 5 percent by fiscal 2010.

To support projected growth, Toshiba plans to invest ¥1.75 trillion ($14.7 billion) over three years, a ¥300 billion ($2.5 billion) increase from the previous forecast. Fifty-eight percent of the investment will go to semiconductor production.

Toshiba will also increase its R&D budeget by ¥180 billion ($1.5 billion) to ¥1.29 trillion ($10.8 billion), about 42 percent of which will be spent on electronic device development.

Toshiba expects the NAND flash memory market to expand more than 10 times on a bit basis, to 8,500 Gbytes by 2009. However, growth on a value basis is estimated to be slower, at only 24 percent annually.

"The moderate value growth estimation is based on the assumption that the price will drop by 50 percent every year," said Nishida.

To cope with the anticipated sharp price decline, Toshiba said it will accelerate the shift to finer process technology, use multilevel cell technology and pursue fab expansion.

Toshiba started using 56-nm process technology at its Fab 3 last January, three months ahead of schedule. In the third quarter of this year, more than 50 percent of its NAND memory will be 56-nm products. Fab 4, which will begin operation in the fourth quarter, will use a 43-nm process.