TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida plans to meet on Thursday with top executives from global semiconductor companies including TSMC to seek active investment in Japan, said two people involved in planning the meeting.
Executives from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) will join those from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc, Applied Materials Inc, International Business Machines Corp and IMEC, the people said on Wednesday.
Kishida will also ask those companies to develop closer cooperation with Japanese firms, the people said following a Yomiuri newspaper report on the meeting.
Japan is striving to breathe vigour into its chip sector, whose global market share has tumbled to about 10% from around 50% in the late 1980s.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, is building a major factory in western Japan. Samsung is considering setting up a chip packaging test line in the country, five people familiar with the matter said in March.
(Reporting by Yoshifumi Takemoto and Maki Shiraki; Writing by Mariko Katsumura and Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Christopher Cushing)
