Japanese Toshiba announced on September 29 that the company plans to scale down R&D spending by around 50% through staff reductions at its Yokohama-based Advanced Microelectronics Center, Toshiba's main R&D facility for chip operations based in Yokohama, Japan, Dow Jones reported on September 29. To achieve this goal, Toshiba stated that by fiscal year 2010- which runs from April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011 - its Yokohama center, which currently employs 1,200 engineers, will retain only 500 jobs and relocate 500 engineers to its R&D center in Kawasaki and 200 engineers to other facilities in southern and central Japan, the Bloomberg News reported on September 29.

Aside from staff reductions, Toshiba also aims to reduce number of devices used for chip manufacturing operations from current 300 units to 100. Meanwhile, the company also plans to reduce R&D spending at its electronic device segment - including microchips, sensors and LCD TV (Liquid Crystal Display Television) businesses - by 22% to 400 billion Yen (US$4.4 billion; US$= 90.0 Yen) for fiscal year 2009 and 2010 when compared with fiscal year 2008-2009, according again to Bloomberg News