"NEC Electronics" Corp. and "Renesas Technology" Corp. will merge by April 2010, after their parent companies decided to inject 200 billion yen (USD 2.2 billion) into the new entity set to become the world"s third largest chipmaker. Following this transaction, "Hitachi" Ltd. Will own 33% of the new company - which will be called "Renesas Electronics" Corp., "Mitsubishi Electric" Corp. will own 25%, and NEC Corp. will own 31%.
Renesas President Yasushi Akao will become the president of the new chipmaker.
The company will have over 28% of the USD 11 billion market for car microcontrollers and consumer electronics, meaning it could become almost three times larger than its nearest rival "Freescale Semiconductor" Inc.
In 2008, conbined sales of "Renesas" and "NEC Electronics" amounted to 12.8 billion dollars, which would put the company in the third spot, after US based Intel Corp. (USD 33.8 billion) and "Samsung Electronics" Co. (USD 16.9 billion). Sales of "Toshiba" Corp., the largest Japanese chipmaker, amounted to 11.1 billion dollars.