Elpida Memory has announced that it reached an agreement with Walton Advanced Engineering in which Walton will purchase from Elpida 7,500 preferred shares in Elpida subsidiary EBS. The value of the share purchase is estimated at JPY 3.75 billion (US$50 million).

The Atheros team will operate as Qualcomm Atheros, a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm. The Qualcomm connectivity team will shift over to Qualcomm Atheros to combine resources and roadmaps.

Iwate Toshiba Electronics will start to ramp-up production lines from March 28. However, Toshiba Mobile Display (Saitama Pref.), a wholly-owned subsidiary and manufacturer of mid- and small-sized LCD displays, expects to take about a month to secure recovery of its manufacturing line. Toshiba has started to supply some products alternatively from the Ishikawa Works, the company's another production facility located in Ishikawa Pref..

ON Semiconductor has announced the completion of the acquisition of Sanyo Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Sanyo Electric, and other assets related to Sanyo Electric's semiconductor business.

Toshiba announced it has acquired Fujitsu's shareholding in Toshiba Storage Device and turned the JV its wholly-owned subsidiary. Toshiba and Fujitsu merged their HDD businesses in October 2009.

Infineon Technologies was sued by the insolvency administrator of Qimonda who filed an action in a Munich court seeking a liability judgment for an unspecified amount.

Elpida will slash production at its Hiroshima site and at the plant of Taiwanese subsidiary Rexchip Electronics and will consider postponing the construction of a plant in Taiwan, the Nikkei reported.

Google Energy has signed a deal to purchase 114 megawatts of energy from a wind farm in Iowa, marking the first deal done by Google's energy subsidiary.

Elpida plans to withdraw its patent lawsuits filed with the Virginia US district court while Infineon and its US subsidiary have agreed to abandon a patent infringement complaint against Elpida and other respondents filed last February with the US International Trade Commission in Washington D.C.

Nokia has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of the outstanding shares of Novarra, a web browsing company based in Chicago. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2010 and following the acquisition, Novarra will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nokia.

Elpida Memory aims to list subsidiary Rexchip Electronics on the Taiwan stock exchange in its fiscal 2010, according to a person familiar with the matter. Although the company had said it was considering listing Rexchip, it had yet to decide on concrete plans.

The Portuguese DRAM test and assembly operation subsidiary of insolvent Qimonda has been offered a financial life line and is taking on a new name, according to local reports.

DuPont Apollo has announced the opening of its silicon based thin-film photovoltaic module manufacturing facility. The 538,000-square-feet facility will have an annual capacity of up to 50 megawatts with a thin-film-on-glass PV module production line. Full-scale commercial production is slated for the first quarter of 2010.

GaAs epiwafer foundry Kopin is investing an additional US$6.3 million in its Asian foundry venture, Kopin Taiwan.