TOKYO—Toshiba Corp. officials have mostly given up on an $18 billion sale of the company’s chip unit because Chinese antitrust approval is unlikely to come soon, leading them to accelerate a review of alternatives, people involved in the matter said.
The Japanese company reached a deal in September to sell its NAND flash-memory unit to a group led by private-equity firm Bain Capital, but the deal has been waiting for a nod from antitrust regulators in China, one of the unit’s top markets. Flash memory is widely used in smartphones,...