Toshiba today issued another profits warning and said it would sack a further 3,900 temporary workers as the sprawling technology conglomerate rumbled towards its first full-year net loss since 2002.

The downgrade in earnings forecasts comes despite recent suggestions from elsewhere in the global semiconductor industry that flash memory prices may at last be finding their feet after months on the slide.

The prospect of a bottoming-out seemed marginally brighter earlier this week after Intel said that the PC industry had seen the worst of the crisis in the first quarter of 2009.

Chipmakers have seen their business models badly wounded by a chronic glut of worldwide capacity and a “dumbing down” of PCs which means they require, on average, less DRAM memory per unit.

The Japanese government is understood to be considering an emergency injection of public money into Elpida Memory, and a deal brokered by the Taiwanese government aimed at helping a major local player in the battle for survival.

Even the biggest players in the industry, like Korea’s Samsung Electronics, have not been able to weather the storm in memory prices without dipping into the red. Germany’s Qimonda was recently forced into bankruptcy as the oversupply crisis sent some chip prices below the cost of production.

The job cuts, which will all be made at Toshiba facilities in Japan, follow the cutting of about 4,500 jobs in January as part of the company’s bid to return to profits by the end of the current financial year.

Since then, the implosion of demand around the world has continued to destroy consumer electronic markets and forced other leading chipmakers to consider defensive mergers and government bailouts.

Toshiba said that it probably posed a net loss of 350 billion yen (£2.4 billion) in the financial year which ended on March 31 — at least Y70 billion worth of extra red ink on top of the previous guidance given to investors.

There were, though, a few glimmers of better news. Despite the expected widening of net losses, the company said that operating losses would, at Y250 billion, be somewhat better than previously imagined. Year-on-year sales will probably have fallen 13 per cent in the course of fiscal 2008: horrific compared with the Y250 billion profits logged in 2007, but representing a shallower descent than the previous estimate.

Toshiba’s new round of job cuts is consistent with the sharp retrenchment among Japanese manufacturers across a variety of sectors. Japanese companies, once notorious for snail’s-pace corporate decision-making, have surprised analysts with the speed at which they have cut headcounts and shuttered factories. Power demand in Japan fell nearly 6 per cent in fiscal 2008, in a reflection of that effect.

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive