Intel, one of the world’s leading NOR flash manufacturers, and STMicroelectronics, another of the world’s leading manufacturers of flash memory, have announced the formation of a new, independent company that will be making both NAND and NOR flash memories, but also work on the coming phase-change technology. The new company will take over the manufacturing of Intel’s NOR circuits and STMicroelectronics’ NAND manufacturing, and the two will own 45.1 and 48.6% respectively. The remaining portion will be owned by Francisco Partners L.P., an independent equity company, which invests $150 million USD and gets a 6.3% share in exchange.
“The new company will immediately be able to offer a very broad range of non-volatile memory solutions in order to address the needs of a wide variety of communications and industrial customers,” -Dipanjan Deb, founder and managing partner at Francisco Partners.
ST’s Flash Memories Group former VP Mario Licciardello will be the man controlling the new company that will be based in Switzerland, with nine research and manufacturing locations worldwide. The new company will have more than 8000 employees. The company will offer products for everything from mobile phones, MP3 players to digital cameras and computers, etc.
