Toshiba Corp. Chief Executive Officer Atsutoshi Nishida said Thursday his company doesn't plan to make an offer for SanDisk Corp. that would challenge Samsung Electronics Co.'s unsolicited bid for the U.S. company.
"I have no intention of doing that," Nishida told reporters at the CEATEC consumer electronics show in Chiba Prefecture. Samsung Electronics, the leader in the $15 billion market for flash memory chips that store songs and pictures in consumer electronics, said last month it made a $5.85 billion bid for SanDisk that was rejected by the California-based company.
Toshiba, the world's second-largest flash memory maker, shares production facilities with SanDisk.
An acquisition would benefit Samsung because it would gain flash-memory patents held by SanDisk that cost the Korean company about $400 million in annual royalty payments, according to Citigroup Inc. analyst Henry Kim.
A news report on Sept. 18 said Toshiba was considering bidding for SanDisk. Tokyo-based Toshiba said in February that the two companies plan to share investment of ¥1.7 trillion to build two flash-memory factories.