Sanyo Electric Co, whose electronics business predominantly targets the consumer market, had lost its way even before recession laid waste the Japanese industrial landscape, hopes to revive its fortunes with a plunge into Flash memory chips. The Osaka firm makes 4M-bit dynamics, but will not move on to 16Ms. Instead, it has licensed SuperFlash designs and technology from Silicon Storage Technology Inc, Sunnyvale, California and is investing $200m to start making 1M Flash parts from February, 4Ms from May, at a rate of 500,000 of each a month. It will move on to 16Ms and 32Ms from 1995. Sanyo will supply Silicon Storage with both finished parts and processed silicon wafers.
