Weak semiconductor demand
Toshiba has announced a downward revision of its business forecast for the first half of its 2008 financial year, which runs from April to September.
Anticipated net sales are now ¥3,550 billion, down ¥250 billion from the 25th April forecast. This will yield a net loss of ¥50 billion instead of the ¥15 billion profit predicted in the previous forecast.
The official reasons given by Toshiba for the revision are "price erosion in NAND flash memory exceeding estimates and a slump in the System LSI business reflecting weak demand for semiconductors for digital consumer products." It expects these factors to affect its second half performance too.
So it seems that the semiconductor manufacturing side of things is dragging down decent performances from its Social Infrastructure (industrial products like power generators and lifts) and Digital Products (PCs, mobile phones, etc) business units. Losing the next generation optical storage battle probably didn't help either.
