Winbond Acquires NexFlash Technology

--  Winbond Electronics Corporation today announced it has acquired 46% in stock shares of NexFlash Technology, Inc. via Winbond's wholly-owned overseas subsidiary - Winbond International Corporation. Winbond first acquired 54% of Nexflash stock in January 2001. With this acquisition of the remaining 46% of Nexflash stock, Winbond will now own 100% stock shares of NexFlash.

NexFlash Technology, Inc. is a professional semiconductor company in the Silicon Valley, USA. Its expertise mainly focuses on Flash Memory technology and related products. It owns a variety of patents for high density Data Flash and Code Flash products. NexFlash has a full spectrum of Serial Flash products ranging from 2M to 32M capacities which are ready for the PC, communication and optical storage equipment markets. These products are all manufactured by Winbond¥Œs 0.18m WinStack process technology in Winbond's 8-inch fab.

Winbond possesses strong product design and production capabilities in Flash Memory products, especially in the low density memory product domains, which have sold well in the global market. The addition of Nexflash's Serial Flash Memory product line will be a good complement to Winbond's current low density Parallel Flash Memory product line. With Serial Flash Memory's low cost advantage, the technology trend for low density Flash has gradually moved from Parallel Flash Memory towards Serial Flash Memory. Therefore, with this acquisition, Winbond can now fully acquire the technology proficiencies in Serial Flash products in order to enhance the global competitiveness of Flash Memory products for the Company, thus allowing Winbond to provide total solutions for today's customers and to meet tomorrow's demand.