The two companies will put up 200 billion yen each to complete the plant by next year and start mass-production thereafter. Once the new production line is up and running, Toshiba will see its memory chip capacity rise by 20 percent. The company plans to make chips of 16-17 nanometers circuit linewidth at the new plant from the current 19 nanometers.

 

The Nikkei said, "The latest announcement by Toshiba was intended to narrow the gap with Samsung Electronics, the No. 1 supplier in memory chips." Currently Toshiba is the world's second largest producer of NAND flash memory chips after Samsung. According to the U.S. market research firm IHS Global, Samsung accounted for 37 percent of the NAND flash memory market while Toshiba 31 percent, based on shipment data in 2012.