Power to the memory chips! This may very well be Toshiba’s saving grace after some unfortunate losses for the company.

Toshiba, Japan’s largest maker of semiconductors, posted a first-quarter profit on sales of memory chips used in mobile phones, digital cameras and music players such as Apple Computer’s iPod.

Net income was 4 billion ($56 million), or 1.26 a share, in the three months ended June 30, from a loss of 8.9 billion, or 2.77, a year earlier, the Tokyo-based company said yesterday. Sales rose 12 per cent to 1.453 trillion.

The earnings boost may help president Atsutoshi Nishida fund a record investment in semiconductors this year and the company’s US$5.4 billion ($8.7 billion) acquisition of Westinghouse Electric.

Toshiba, which gets more than half of its operating profit from chips, is building its fourth factory to make flash memory with SanDisk.

Operating profit was 20.8 billion in the quarter, compared with a 1.9 billion loss a year earlier…. Source: nzherald.co.nz