When fully facilitized the wafer fab is expected to double Toshiba's NAND production capacity from about 260,000 wafers per month to 500,000 wafers per month, the reports said.

Toshiba is now expected to begin construction of the fab in Mie prefecture in the summer and to begin manufacturing operations in 2011, reports said. "The plan still exists, but we haven't decided yet when to start building the plant," a Dow Jones report quoted a Toshiba spokesman as saying. The decision on the exact timing is expected later this year and in time to allow construction to begin in 2010 in line with a previous Toshiba statement.

Toshiba announced it was delaying the construction of two NAND flash fabs in January 2009. One was a fab in Yokkaichi, in Mie prefecture, from spring of 2009 until 2010. The company also postponed the building of a wafer fab in Kitakami in northern Japan.

Toshiba, which works with SanDisk to produce NAND flash memory was ranked second with 34.2 percent market share and $4.131 billion revenue in 2009, by DRAMexchange. For the full year of 2009 Samsung retained leadership with 37.9 percent market share and $4.575 billion in revenue.