Toshiba Reportedly Withdraws from Second Round Bidding for Elpida.

Toshiba Not Interested in Taking Over Whole Elpida

[04/24/2012 09:59 PM]
by Anton Shilov

Toshiba Corp. has withdrawn from the second round of bidding for Elpida Memory, according to a news-agency report. At present, only Micron Technology, SK Hynix as well as private equity companies are interested in acquiring bankrupt maker of dynamic random access memory.

Apparently, Toshiba did not want to acquire Elpida's money-losing manufacturing facilities in Japan, but was interested in engineering talent, market expertise and patents, Reuters news-agency reports. The company even approached SK Hynix for a joint bid in the second round, but the talks did not end up with serious negotiations.

Some analysts believe that it did not make a lot of sense to buy Elpida for Toshiba as the company itself withdrew from DRAM manufacturing about a decade ago. Nonetheless, Toshiba could integrate NAND flash and DRAM into a single chip for inexpensive smart mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets.

The second round of bidding for Elpida will take place on Friday, where SK Hynix, Micron Technology and private equity firms TPG Capital and Hony Capital will compete for Elpida Memory's assets, including patents, technologies, property and so on.

Toshiba did not officially confirm it quit the bidding process.

Tags: Toshiba, DRAM, Elpida, Business, TPG, SK Hynix, Micron, Hony