Apple May Invest Billions of Dollars In Toshiba's Memory Chip Business (bloomberg.com)

Toshiba shares recovered after Japan's national broadcaster reported that Apple is considering an investment of several billion dollars in its semiconductor unit, raising the prospect that the struggling electronics conglomerate will get a much-needed cash infusion. From a report: Toshiba has put its memory chips business up for sale to make up for a writedown of 716.6 billion yen ($6.56 billion) in its U.S. nuclear equipment operations. One option being considered is an investment accompanied by Toshiba holding shares, so that a majority of the semiconductor unit will be held by U.S. and Japanese interests, satisfying the respective governments, NHK said.

Comments

Kind of an obvious move

[Solandri]

Toshiba is the #2 flash memory manufacturer. Samsung is #1. If Toshiba goes under, Samsung dominates the NAND industry with close to 50% market share (even more for high-speed NAND), and can start to dictate pricing to companies which need to buy large quantities of NAND - like Apple. So it's in Apple's best interest to make sure Toshiba stays around and kicking and manufacturing NAND.