Phison Electronics, in a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE), announced that its board of directors has approved a plan to form a joint venture with Kingston Technology on embedded memory devices aimed at the smartphone and tablet PC markets. Phison said it will invest up to NT$100 million (US$3.3 million) and gain one board seat in the JV.
Phison added the JV with Kingston should have no affect on its customers and upstream suppliers.
The JV will focus on sales and marketing of embedded memory products, developed and manufactured jointly by Kingston and Phison. Kingston will help procure NAND flash and mobile RAM chips, and assist the new company by providing a sales channel platform and logistical support through its regional distributors and brand awareness. Phison will be responsible for development of controller IC technology.
In August, Phison chairman Khein Seng Pua revealed plans to step into production of eMMC NAND flash devices and target mainly China's white-box handset market. Pua did not disclose a specific timeframe for the company's entry in the segment. Phison supplies memory controller ICs as well as NAND flash devices, sourcing chips mainly from Toshiba.
Kingston recently kicked off shipments of its in-house developed eMMC NAND flash memory device, which uses Toshiba's chips and is composed of Elpida Memory's mobile RAM solutions, previous reports cited industry sources as indicating.