June 12, 2006 – Despite efforts by domestic chipmakers to forge alliances for leading-edge chip manufacturing — most notably the long-discussed joint fabrication effort, which now seems to be on life support — at least one Japanese chipmaker has no intention of working with rivals in a chipmaking partnership.

“We are not considering any alliances in the mid- or long-term,” stated Fujitsu president Hiroaki Kurokawa, quoted by local papers at a press conference in Tokyo. Instead, the company is spending a total of 280 billion on its facilities in Mie Prefecture, central Japan, by March 2008 for next-generation system LSI chips used in consumer gadgets.

He also claimed the company would not spin off its PC, cell phone, or hard-disk drive business, which are expected to see profits plummet in the current fiscal year, although he admitted “we do need to tackle the problem of increasing its extremely low profitability.”