Company makes flash memory used in mobile phones, PDAs, and MP3 players to store data Spansion LLC, the flash memory joint venture of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) and Fujitsu Ltd., plans to offer shares of the company at a price between $16 to $18 in its upcoming initial public offering (IPO), the company announced Friday.A total of 35,294,118 shares will be offered to the public, with the expected take from the IPO coming in at around $561 million, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. AMD will own about 40 percent of the total outstanding shares after the IPO, and Fujitsu would own about 27 percent of the shares, according to the filing. AMD currently owns 60 percent of Spansion, while Fujitsu owns 40 percent.It was not clear from the filing when the IPO will take place, and a Spansion spokeswoman did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Spansion makes flash memory, which is used in mobile phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants), and MP3 players to store data. Unlike RAM, flash memory can store data without having to be constantly refreshed with electricity.The joint venture has been a drain on AMD’s profits this year, posting quarterly losses and declining revenue figures that have offset the strong performance of AMD’s processor business this year. AMD Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Hector Ruiz announced in April that Spansion would become a separate entity. As long as AMD owns less than 50 percent of the company, it doesn’t have to include Spansion’s financial results on its own income statement.Spansion makes NOR flash memory, which has been losing market share to NAND flash memory this year, according to Spansion’s filing. NOR memory is used in phones and PDAs that need to load operating systems and applications, but it is considered expensive and slow compared to NAND memory, which is used in expansion memory cards and MP3 players. Spansion is in the midst of qualifying a product known as Ornand that is supposed to deliver the reliability of NOR memory with the read and write speeds of NAND memory. Technology Industry