Chipmakers Suspend Production.

Confronted with one of the worst slumps in the global semiconductor industry, Asian chipmakers have decided to shut down production plants and cut staff to cope with the severe downturn in demand.

Hynix Semiconductor (Ichon, Korea), the world's third largest computer memory chipmaker, became the latest chip manufacturer to announce drastic measures amid a slowdown in demand by suspending output in its U.S. plant for several months. The company will suspend chip production at its plant in Eugene, OR, for six months. During the suspension, about 600 employees will be placed on leave.

NEC (Tokyo, Japan), Japan's second-largest chipmaker, halted all operations at its Shiga Prefecture plant for 10 days amid a slump in the chip market in recent months. Fujitsu, the world's third-largest maker of flash memory chips, will halt some output of low-capacity flash memory chips. Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor, a flash memory joint venture between Fujitsu and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, Sunnyvale, CA), will halt its production line for small-capacity flash memories in Fukushima Prefecture for four weeks.

Hitachi (Tokyo, Japan) halted some operations in facilities in Ryuo, Yamanashi Prefecture, Komoro and Nagano Prefecture, due to sluggish demand for chips used in cell phones for the European market.

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Based in Singapore, John Shedd is Asia Correspondent; e-mail: lechat @pacific.net.sg.

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