Expansion

Spansion Inc.
legal form	Incorporated
founding	2006
resolution	2015
Seat	Sunnyvale , California , USA
management	John Kispert
Number of employees	3,893 (December 28, 2014)
sales	1,252,000,000 US dollars (2014)
Branch	Semiconductor industry
Website	www.spansion.com

Spansion was an American company that developed and produced flash memories . The headquarters were in Sunnyvale / California , in the heart of the Silicon Valley . However, the company's development departments were also located in Japan. The company merged with Cypress Semiconductors at the end of 2014 . The name of the merged company is Cypress Semiconductors, the business areas of Spansion will for the most part (as of 2015-04) be continued under the old name.

history

Spansion was originally a joint venture between the Japanese electronics group Fujitsu and the American semiconductor manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices (AMD for short), which specializes in NOR flash memory and was founded in 1993 as Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor Limited (FASL for short).

At that time the company was under the entrepreneurial and technological leadership of AMD. FASL developed into a leading company in the very changeable flash industry. At times it was even the world market leader before Intel .

Flash memory from Spansion

Spansion Traveo ARM Evaluation Board

In May 2003, Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor Limited was renamed FASL LLC and the cooperation was expanded. AMD and Fujitsu gave their entire flash production to FASL LLC and the new brand name Spansion was established. In 2004 the name was changed again to Spansion , as the new brand was very successful. During this time the company was very profitable and made large profits, with which AMD in particular was able to compensate for losses from the processor division.

During a flash sales crisis in 2005, AMD announced that it would spin off Spansion as a separate public company due to ongoing losses. Since 2006 Spansion has been a completely independent company.

On February 10, 2009, Spansion Japan filed for bankruptcy under the Japanese Company Restructuring Act after Spansion failed to post a profit since going public. Following the announcement of extensive layoffs, on March 1, 2009 the parent company also applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

After the Delaware bankruptcy court approved Spansion's recovery plan in April 2010, management under the leadership of John Kispert began restructuring the company. In May 2010, the company announced that the reorganization process was complete. The former Spansion common stock has been declared invalid. New shares were issued. Since June 2010 the company has been traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CODE. During this time, too, the company remained relatively successful in the NOR Flash area.

For the fourth quarter of 2012, the company reported net sales of $ 224 million.

In December 2014, Spansion and Cypress Semiconductors announced that they would merge as companies with equal rights.