Fujitsu Reorgs For Manufacturing

Fujitsu officially announced its intention of reorganizing its semiconductor manufacturing businesses, including dividing the Aizu Wakamatsu factory and Mie factory as branches of the foundry companies. The rest of the organization, including the system memory department and Fujitsu Electronics will become a part of Fujitsu’s semiconductor group. The new Foundry Company will also be a part of the same group.

Fujitsu still possesses the factories’ production line, but it sold its analog device business to Spansion in April 2013. In December 2013 it struck a deal to buy Transphorm, merging the startup company with its own power device department. And in April, its LSI systems unit announced its joint venture plan with Panasonic. However, on July 31, it instead agreed to set up a new fabless company with Fujitsu, Fujitsu Semiconductor, Panasonic, and the Development Bank of Japan.

Yasuo Nishiguchi from Kyousera will become CEO of this new fabless company. The official opening of the business is scheduled for the fourth quarter. Fujitsu Semiconductor and Panasonic decided to utilize their film/imaging and network-related management resources. The voting ratio is as followed: Fujitsu 40%, Panasonic 20%, Development Bank 40%, and 2,800 employees.

As for the production line, the companies decided to divide factories as branches of the new Foundry company sometime this quarter. The Aizu Wakamatsu factory will be the presiding company with headquarters functions. It will use its 150mm fab for analog products and its 200mm fab for specialized processes. The 200mm fab will handle an existing foundry contract with On Semiconductor. On struck an agreement with Fujitsu to contribute 10%, or 700M yen ($6.7 million) There has been no announcement regarding 150mm factory.

As for the Mie factory, the only announcement was a plan of establishment of a new Mie Foundry company. A report last year that Fujitsu and TSMC were planning a joint venture has vanished. There also was a rumor of merging Mie with UMC on Nihon Keizai Shinbun (a Japanese daily economy newspaper) but there has not been any official announcement. Nevertheless, it was mentioned that affiliation with external partners is planned. This factory is unique because it uses super low power consumption technology (it was assumed to have purchased its technology license from SuVolta.) and non-volatile memory consolidation technology.

Figure 1 Reorganization of Fujitsu Semiconductor manufacturing business. Source: Fujitsu