Toshiba Corp. may contract out some production of large-scale integrated circuits to cut manufacturing costs.
The company may give orders to Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. of Singapore or Globalfoundries of the U.S., the Nikkei newspaper reported Monday.
"We are considering outsourcing any system LSI output that exceeds our production capacity, but nothing has been decided at the moment," Toshiba said in a statement later in the day.
Slumping global demand for the chips used in consumer electronics and increasing costs of the race to make smaller, more powerful devices has led Fujitsu Ltd. to outsource output of its most advanced semiconductors and is forcing NEC Electronics Corp. and Renesas Technology Corp. to merge operations.