Sony Reportedly Selling Cell BE Chip Fab to Toshiba
Just days after two Sony spokespersons flatly told Bloomberg News that no such deal had been reached, Asian press sources are saying today the company has agreed to sell its Kyushu Semiconductor facility - which produces the Cell BE CPU for Sony's PlayStation 3 - to its STI partner Toshiba for about 100 billion yen (about $863.5 million).
The deal would help scale down Sony's ongoing investment in semiconductor technology, while at the same time keeping the Cell chip in the family. Sony, Toshiba, and IBM have been partnering in the Cell's development since its inception.
The fact that the company is considering selling the manufacturing operation for the PlayStation 3's central processor was publicly pronounced last February. If the deal went as Executive Deputy President Yutaka Nakagawa indicated it should at that time, Sony will have held on to the intellectual property rights for the Cell. In other words, it did not sell the processor as some have reported, just the facility in which it's built.
It isn't so much the cash that Sony needs right now. The deal - if officially confirmed - would reduce Sony's capital expenditures for Kyushu's upkeep, which BusinessWeek reported last week have already totaled $1.7 billion. It would also free up Sony to pursue an "asset light" strategy, in which it continues to research and develop the intellectual property for processors while it licenses that IP to others.
For Cell, though, that wouldn't be the case, as any deal would likely have Sony outsourcing its production to what would presumably be called "Toshiba Kyushu" for a nominal sum.
According to the Kyushu plant's Web site, you wouldn't think Sony was tooling it up for a possible sale. At the start of the month, the plant's parent had moved over a key Sony Device Technology official from Thailand to run its quality control. Quite likely, any sale of the plant would involve its key officers as well.
However, the information and quotes from today's AP report comes from a Bloomberg News story - the same story we linked to in the first paragraph above - which was originally dated last Thursday...prior to the apparent news of Sony's confirmation. The latest information from Asian sources (those not quoting the AP) continue to say the deal is on. We'll keep you posted.