Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp., the world's second- largest maker of consumer electronics, is considering various options for its chip business, a company official said in response to a report that it plans to sell some chip production facilities.

Sony, based in Tokyo, will sell some of its advanced chip production lines to Toshiba Corp., Japan's largest chipmaker, for about 100 billion yen ($867 million), the Nikkei English News reported earlier today, without saying where it obtained the information.

``We are considering various options for our advanced chip production,'' said Tomio Takizawa, a Sony spokesman, today in a telephone interview. ``Nothing specific has been decided.''

The production lines in question are those at a plant in Nagasaki prefecture of Japan's southern island of Kyushu, which makes advanced chips, including the core chips for Sony's PlayStation 3 game consoles.

The core chip, called ``Cell,'' used for the micro processing unit of the game console, was developed in cooperation with Tokyo-based Toshiba and International Business Machines Corp.

``We are considering options to strengthen our chip operations, but it is not true that we have decided'' to buy Sony's chip production lines, said Keisuke Omori, a Toshiba spokesman, today in a telephone interview.

Sony in February had said it may give up making the most advanced version of the Cell chips, and would consider an option of outsourcing the production.

The chip plant also makes those used for image-processing components of the game console and for Sony's video cameras.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hiroshi Suzuki in Tokyo at hsuzuki5@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 14, 2007 23:31 EDT