Toshiba, Japan’s largest chip maker, reported a quarterly loss on Wednesday after the global economic slowdown aggravated a glut in the market for chips used to store data in consumer electronics.
The net loss was yen26.8 billion, or about $275 million, in the three months that ended Sept. 30, compared with a yen25 billion profit a year earlier, the company said. Sales fell 7 percent to yen1.88 trillion.
Toshiba joins Samsung Electronics and Sony among electronics makers reporting lower earnings this month.
Toshiba, the second-largest producer in the $15 billion NAND flash-memory market, after Samsung, kept its forecast for the lowest profit in four years. Also on Wednesday, Fujitsu, the biggest Japanese computer services provider, cut its full-year forecast by 40 percent as the weakening global economy depressed demand for semiconductors used in electronics.
The company said it expected net income of yen60 billion in the 12 months that will end on March 31.
Second-quarter net income was yen4.2 billion in the three months that ended Sept. 30, compared with profit of yen5.4 billion a year earlier, Fujitsu said.
Toshiba said it had yet to make a decision about possible cuts to its plan to spend yen367 billion on new lines and equipment for its chip business.
A slowdown in the global economy is muting demand for NAND flash memory chips, used in music players like the iPod and digital cameras, and Toshiba.
The trend is widely expected to slow Toshiba’s aggressive plans to increase capacity to catch up with Samsung.
Toshiba is still banking on breaking even on its chip business in the October-March second half, based on its assumption that price falls in NAND flash memory will slow to a 10 percent fall in October-December, and a 5 percent drop in January-March. Prices fell 45 percent in the six months to Sept. 30, it said.
“We are…