California-based joint venture Spansion LLC was planning to build a line at its Japanese manufacturing base in Aizu-Wakamatsu city, 200 kilometersmiles) north of Tokyo, said Koichi Wakamatsu, spokesman for Spansion Japan.

"But it is yet to be decided when and what product we will produce with what scale of investment," he said.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun business newspaper and other Japanese media said Spansion would build a cutting-edge production line for flash memory chips used mainly in mobile phones.

It will invest more than 100 billion yen (950 million dollars) on the new line, which will go operational in early 2006 with capacity of 15,000 300-millimeter wafers a month, the reports said.

Spansion was established in July 2003 upon the merger of flash memory operations of Fujitsu Ltd. of Japan and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. of the United States.

AMD controls 60 percent of the California company, with Fujitsu holding the rest.

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