Japan’s Golden Week, a collection of several national holidays over seven days, and the longest holiday beside the New Year and summer vacations, will see giant semiconductor firms shutting down their plants for the whole period, in a reaction against falling prices in the Dynamic RAM marketplace. Toshiba Ltd and Mitsubishi Electric Co closed its lines last Thursday and doesn’t plan to re-open them until May 5th, reports the EE Times, while Mitsubishi plans to halt production for seven days, cutting the production of its 64 Mbit DRAMs by 800,000 units. Fujitsu Ltd is also shutting its domestic plants for up to six days. Meanwhile, LCD prices are also plummeting, due to an oversupply of 14-inch active matrix display notebook screens. Mitsubishi, Samsung Semiconductor Inc and NEC Electronics Inc have all been forced to slash prices, said the paper.
