With the surging demand for smartphone chips, Japan's Toshiba and Elpida plan to restart chip investment this year, according to Nikkei on July 18. Toshiba will spend $20 to $30 billion Yen (US$207 to $311 million; US$1 = $96.616 Yen) on advanced equipment in Mie, Japan, to launch mass production of NAND flash memory for smartphone storage as early as April 2014. Meanwhile, Elpida also has felt the need to expand its smartphone DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) production, with its Hiroshima facility and Taiwan subsidiary Rexchip Electronics already reaching full capacity. Elpida aims to quadruple Rexchip's capacity from 10,000 units of 12-inch wafers per month to 40,000 units by the end of 2013.