Financially troubled Hynix Semiconductor Inc is looking to other foreign chip makers for a possible alliance amid reports that talks with US chip maker Micron Technology Inc have hit a snag, company and industry officials said yesterday.
"Hynix isn't in exclusive talks with Micron. We are open to talks with any company," said Choi Soo, a managing director at Hynix, the world's third largest memory chip maker. He would not say whether talks with Micron were faltering.
Published reports have said Hynix and Micron are haggling over price. The Japanese Nihon Keizai newspaper identified one of Hynix's new potential foreign partners as Infineon Technologies AG of Germany, the world's fourth largest memory chip maker.
Infineon chief executive Ulrich Schumacher was quoted in the Japanese report as saying that his company and Hynix may form a joint venture to develop and manufacture memory chips. Hynix declined to confirm the report. But an industry source close to Hynix said yesterday that a team of Infineon officials visited Seoul last week to talk with Hynix.
Hynix also declined to comment on the reported visit.
In December, Infineon ended months of talks with Japan's Toshiba Corp on co-operating in making memory chips. The move came after Toshiba decided to sell a key part of its chip business to Micron.
Struggling under debts of more than US$6 billion, Hynix has been in talks with Micron since December to form a strategic alliance, including a possible merger of their memory chip operations to cope with sagging demand and falling prices.
The talks have failed to make progress. Micron said on Monday that its fourth round of talks with Hynix in California ended in a stalemate and that no new discussions were planned.
(China Daily February 1, 2002)
