July 17, 2006 – Chinese foundry Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. has established a Japanese subsidiary to establish a presence in the domestic market, according to local news reports. GMSC Japan will primarily subcontract logic chip manufacturing for flash memory chips using 0.15-micron processes.

The unit, capitalized at 10 million yen (roughly US $88,000), is headed up by Hikeaki Ito, former overseas operations manager for Hitachi Ltd.’s semiconductor group.

Sales in Japan accounted for about 10% of Grace’s 20 billion yen (roughly $170 million) in sales in 2005, although business has been slow in a market where most chip production, even for mature process technologies is done in-house, vs. other regions with established fabless business such as the US and Europe.