NEC Electronics, Elpida Team Up on Display Driver Chips

Tokyo, June 20, 2008 (Jiji Press) - NEC Electronics Corp. <6723> and Elpida Memory Inc. <6665> said Friday they will set up a joint company in December to develop and sell display driver integrated circuit chips.

The unit, whose capital size is still undecided, will be owned 80 pct by NEC Electronics and 20 pct by Elpida, according to the parent firms.

The two chipmakers intend to combine their technologies to improve competition with rivals and to cut costs by outsourcing production to Elpida's advanced chip fabrication plant in Hiroshima Prefecture, they said.

NEC Electronics has a 13 pct share of the global market for display driver ICs, which are used to drive liquid crystal display and plasma display panels, with annual sales amounting to some 80 billion yen.
Elpida is Japan's sole producer of dynamic random access memory chips and has expressed its intention to start manufacturing system-on-chip products for sale under other brands.

JCN