NEC Electronics Corp., Japan's third- biggest chipmaker, said sales of semiconductors that process images in televisions, mobile phones and game consoles will rise 50 percent in three years.

Revenue from the product will climb to 90 billion yen ($826 million) in the year ending March 2011, from about 60 billion yen last fiscal year, Hisao Tateishi, a vice president at the division that makes graphics chips, said in an Aug. 6 interview in Kawasaki city, near Tokyo.

NEC Electronics, aiming to break even this fiscal year after cutting costs, is counting on demand for the chips used in cars, game players and electronics such as Sony Corp.'s Bravia televisions to help triple its profit margin by next fiscal year.

The graphics chips that NEC makes combine dynamic random access memory and a processor on one piece of silicon to speed up calculations, reduce power consumption and size. The Kawasaki- based company's system-on-a-chip division, which accounts for about 40 percent of revenue, makes the graphics semiconductors.

Monthly output at the company's plant in Yamagata, northern Japan, which makes chips used in handsets, game consoles and TVs, will almost double over the two years ending March 2010, NEC Electronics said in May.

The chipmaker said in May its operating margin will climb to 5 percent in the year ending March 2010, from 1.5 percent forecast for the current 12-month period.

Source:bloomberg