Toshiba will cut 6,000 chips from its product list

JAPANESE ELECTRONICS MAKER Toshiba is going to cut back the range of chips it fabs in a bid to increase efficiency.

Toshiba, which makes a wide range of chips and is the second largest manufacturer of flash memory, will cut its product line-up by as much as 6,000 chips, according to Reuters. The move is a bid to increase the efficiency of its business after the firm announced that sales for its chip division will be lower than expected this year.

One area where Toshiba will wield the blade will be chips used in automotive and electronics. Reuters reports that Toshiba will focus on multi-purpose chips, those that can be re-purposed by simply rewriting software.

Chip makers have had a troublesome year, and memory manufacturers in particular have had to tighten their belts. With flagging demand for PCs, many are looking towards NAND flash memory used in smartphones and tablets as the way to make money.

Toshiba's chip business made a profit of 1.6bn yen for the second quarter of 2011, which sounds impressive until you realise that figure is 90 per cent down from the previous year. Other chipmakers have also reported largely flat sales, and last week chip vendor Nvidia cited its Tegra chip mainly found in tablets as the reason for its steady financial results.

While Toshiba might be pruning its chip offerings, it's unlikely to pull away from the NAND flash memory market. µ