Instead of just whingeing that their market has been stolen by cheap South-East Asian or Eastern European manufacturers, Japan’s steelmakers and other companies in smokestack industries diversify into sunrise industries, and Kobe Steel Ltd, which has a string of computer related ventures – unitsdistribute Alliant and Altos machines, and bought CDC’s Japanese computer aided instruction business – is entering the chipmaking business via a joint venture with Texas Instruments Inc. The new KTI Semiconductor Inc, capitalised at $58m and majority-owned by Kobe, will invest $360m to build a plant in Hyogo to make CMOS logic chips for Texas to market under its own name. Kobe is also researching new materials in the US and has a stake in US disk integrator Racet Inc.
