Silicon Storage Technology (SST) is said to be interested in consolidation with Taiwan packaging and testing houses in order to guarantee backend production capacity. Second-tier companies that currently have fundraising plans, including Aptos and Stack Devices, have been named as potential candidates.

Industry sources noted that SST is likely to acquire about 10% of its targeted partner in order to facilitate the consolidation. If the investment does take place, this new partner would become the third Taiwan packaging and testing house after King Yuan Electronics Company (KYEC) and Powertech Technology (PTI) to have investment ties with SST.

Reviewing the fund raising plans among second-tier packaging and testing houses in Taiwan, both Aptos, the 18%-held affiliate at Phison Electronics (Note: This is not the Aptos that is being acquired by Chipbond) and Stack Devices, are both likely to draw SST's investment.

Sources at Aptos indicated that the company welcomes any investment. They also noted that Aptos anticipates broadening its customer base through a potential strategic partnership. Some industry players project that SST may partner with Aptos on multi-chip packaging (MCP).

Since the general manager at Aptos had been performed in the same role at PTI during the time when the company forged a successful partnership with Kingston, industry players commented the the executive is experienced at building partnerships between the two parties and is likely to be able to duplicate his success for Aptos.

Besides having Phison as its major shareholder, Aptos also has investment from PNY Technologies and memory module makers including Apacer Technology and Ritek. Aptos currently houses a memory card chip-on-board (COB) capacity of six million units.

Stack Devices is the other packaging and testing house named as a potential candidate. The company currently houses a monthly memory card COB capacity of five million units with shipments totaling about two million. Customers at Stack Devices include Apacer, Transcend Information and SanDisk.

With a solid foothold in the low-density NOR flash market, SST is also extending its influence to NAND flash through the introduction of all-in-one memory that combines NOR, NAND flash and RAM memory all packed into a single package for embedded systems applications.

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