Apple may need to contend with a supply shortage of the soon-to-be-released new model of its iPhone during the first round of the rollout, due to problems with faulty components, the Nikkei Asian Review has learned.

Japan's Renesas Electronics is in the final stages of negotiations to acquire US chipmaker Intersil for as much as JPY300 billion ($2.99 billion), the Nikkei business daily reported on Monday.

Toshiba and US partner Western Digital will commit 1.5 trillion yen or US$14.6 billion over three years toward stepping up flash memory production at their jointly run Japanese plant, in a bid to widen global market share, Nikkei reported.

Taiwan's tech suppliers will get significantly fewer orders from Apple in the second half of 2016 compared with a year ago, no thanks to an ongoing slump in demand for premium smartphones and a lack of groundbreaking features for the upcoming iPhone 7, sources familiar with the matter told the Nikkei Asian Review.

Toshiba is looking to cut up to 7,000 jobs, as it looks to streamline operations in the wake of an accounting scandal, the Nikkei business daily reported.

Toshiba and SK Hynix will begin joint production of next-generation memory chips as early as fiscal 2016, bringing them to market ahead of US firm Micron Technology, The Nikkei learned Wednesday.

Japanese consumer electronics giant Panasonic will slash its 14,000-strong chipmaking workforce by half and possibly sell some of its plants, the Nikkei business daily reported Wednesday.

NEC will now focus on conventional handsets and plans to sell some of its mobile phone-related patents, according to the Japanese daily.

NEC will cut about 400 of the less than 900 workers at its mobile phone handset unit to reduce fixed costs at the loss-making business, the Nikkei reported Thursday.

Sony is in talks with suitors including Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision over the sale of its battery business, a Nikkei report said Thursday, as the Japanese firm tries to repair its dented balance sheet.

Toshiba is expected to report a 10% drop in consolidated operating profit for the April-September period as a strong yen hurt sales, the Nikkei reported.

Yukio Sakamoto has decided to step down as president of Elpida Memory to take responsibility for the company's fall once its takeover by Micron Technology is complete, The Nikkei reported Wednesday morning.

The Nikkei Shimbun, Japan's economic newspaper, reported that Nikon is going to work with Intel to develop the next generation semiconductor manufacturing equipment capable of handling 450mm wafers.

Toshiba's first-quarter operating profit is expected to exceed JPY10 billion (US$127.9 million), the Nikkei reported, more than double the profit recorded in the same period a year earlier.

Micron Technology will purchase failed DRAM manufacturer Elpida Memory Inc., The Nikkei reported early Friday. The acquisition price is estimated at 200 billion yen.

China's Hony Capital plans to sell or outsource the operations at Elpida Memory's Hiroshima DRAM plant to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) if its bid for the bankrupt Japanese chipmaker is successful, the Nikkei business daily said on Tuesday.

Toshiba will bid against Micron Technology to become the sponsor of Japan's failed chipmaker Elpida Memory, the Nikkei newspaper said.

Hitachi has sold all 12.8 million shares of Elpida, spokesman Yuichi Izumisawa said by phone today, confirming an earlier Nikkei report.

Elpida Memory, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, intends to draw up a rehabilitation plan within six weeks, the Nikkei reported.

Elpida and Nanya would discuss proposals including the creation of a holding company under which the two DRAM makers would operate, the paper said.

A public-private fund that will acquire the small- and mid-size LCD operations of Toshiba, Hitachi and Sony will also buy a Panasonic factory for about JPY20 billion (US$255.5 million), Japanese business daily The Nikkei said.

Japanese electronics maker Panasonic will scale back domestic semiconductor output by the end of March 2012 and cut about 1,000 jobs, reflecting its recent move to reduce TV panel production, the Nikkei business daily said.

Four months ago Japan's huge earthquake and tsunami wreaked havoc with Japanese equities, causing such frenzied selling that the Tokyo Stock Exchange came under pressure to shut the bourse temporarily. The Nikkei 225 index is now rebounding and homing in on its March 11 close of 10,254.43, when traders had just 14 minutes to react to the quake before trading ended.

Panasonic plans to cut 40,000 jobs globally over the next two years, the Kyodo news agency and the Nikkei business daily reported. The job losses represent about 10% of the company's workforce, and most of the cuts will come from the company's overseas divisions.

Toshiba is hammering out a deal to outsource fabrication of advanced system chips to Globalfoundries, the Nikkei business daily reported, citing company sources.

Shares of Elpida Memory were up 2.3% in early Tokyo trading after business daily Nikkei reported in an unsourced story that the chipmaker plans to raise DRAM prices by about 10% as early as this month.

Nintendo says it will ship about 1.5 million units of its 3DS console in the first month after debut, promising to avoid the huge shortages seen with the launch of earlier versions, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told the Nikkei in an interview ahead of the February 26 release in Japan of the device.

Toshiba will outsource fabrication of system chips to South Korea's Samsung Electronics, freeing up resources for its memory chip operations, the Nikkei business daily has reported.

Sony plans to buy back a Nagasaki semiconductor plant from Toshiba for about 50 billion yen (US$597.2 million) to double output capacity for image sensors used in smartphones and other devices, the Nikkei business daily reported recently.

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.

Intel, Toshiba and Samsung Electronics will join hands to develop technologies that could more than halve semiconductor line widths to nearly 10 nanometers by 2016, the Nikkei daily reported.

Toshiba's operating profits for the April-September period is set to come to more than 100 billion yen (US$1.2 billion), beating the company's forecast of 70 billion yen, according to the Nikkei business daily. Booming global sales of smartphones have boosted demand for the company's flash memory chips and small LCD panels.

The Nikkei business daily recently reported that the resistive random access memory chip to be developed by Elpida and Sharp could write data 10,000 times faster than NAND flash memory technology, while consuming less power. The next-generation memory chip is expected to be commercialized around 2013.

"We're considering various options of outsourcing as well as strengthening our own production capacity because of rising demand," a spokesperson for Sony said. The Nikkei English News recently reported that Sony plans to hire Fujitsu for the bulk of the production process for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor sensors used in digital cameras and camera phones.

Japan's Sanyo Electric will close two of its domestic semiconductor plants by 2012, and move production to another plant along with about 1,000 workers, according to the Nikkei business daily.

Renesas Electronics is cutting nearly 10% of its 50,000 employees by the end of 2010 as it outsources production, according to a Nikkei report.

Hitachi's delay in supplying electronic controls to Nissan was caused by STMicroelectronics' failure to meet a microchip order.

Spansion CEO John Kispert also said he could not confirm a recent Nikkei report indicating Texas Instruments was in final talks to buy two plants owned by Spansion Japan, as Spansion Japan is now a separate entity from Spansion.

Toshiba plans to spend 15 billion yen (US$160 million) in 2010 to build a test production line for advanced flash memory chips, according to the Nikkei business daily. The NAND flash memory vendor has already ordered chip-making equipment from ASML to produce microchips with circuitry widths of less than 25 nanometres.

Elpida Memory is expected to return to the black with an operating profit of almost 20 billion yen (US$222 million) for the year ending this month, buoyed by a recovery in DRAM chip prices, according to the Nikkei business daily.