Sony acquires Toshiba's image sensor business for $155 million

Sony has acquired Toshiba's image sensor business for 19 billion yen that translates to $155 million. As a result of the acquisition, Toshiba will transfer semiconductor fabrication facilities, equipment and related assets of Toshiba's 300mm wafer production line located at Oita City.

Under the agreement, Toshiba's 48,800 sq m image sensor manufacturing plant in Oita City and approximately 1,100 employees will be transferred over to the Sony. The facilities will operate under Sony Semiconductor Corporation ("SCK"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony, which will be dedicated primarily to the production of image sensor.

The deal is at the "memorandum of understanding" and the transfer is expected to be completed within the fiscal year ending March 31, 2016, subject to regulatory approvals. Following the Transfer, Sony and SCK plan to operate the semiconductor fabrication facilities as "fabrication facilities of SCK", primarily to manufacture CMOS image sensors. 

Sony is already a dominant player in the image sensor market, with its products used in its own Xperia lineup and phones made by Apple, China’s Xiaomi and India’s Micromax to name a few. They are used also in DSLRs made by Nikon and its own Alpha models.

Toshiba said that after withdrawing from the CMOS image sensors business it will concentrate on products where it has high technological advantage, and aim to improve the profitability of its system LSI business. Interestingly, Toshiba is also looking to merge its PC division with Fujitsu and Sony spinoff Vaio. The company was hit by massive accounting scandal and decided to exit several of its businesses to raise cash.

Masashi Muromachi, who became Toshiba’s CEO following the accounting scandal, has promised to restructure lower-margin businesses and the deal for the image sensor business would be the beginning of the restructuring. (via)

Source | Via

Kaiser Bey

Kaiser is a tech enthusiast who likes to write, read and talk about tech. He dreams of going to Mars and never come back. We hope that you find his posts on AndroGuider helpful and informative