Bosch will invest EUR3 billion (US$3.01 billion) in chip production by 2026, including on opening two new development centres and expanding a wafer factory in Dresden, the company said on Wednesday.

Infineon Technologies and Robert Bosch were forced to halt key chip factories in Germany after a power failure, potentially exacerbating a global semiconductor supply crunch.

For automotive customers, chip production will start in September - three months earlier than planned.

It plans to produce them at scale to keep self-driving costs down.

Twenty-nine companies and research bodies will take part in the project, among them Robert Bosch, Infineon, STMicroelectronics, Osram, Carl Zeiss, GlobalFoundries and Murata.

Thailand's automotive market is booming: in 2016, nearly two million cars were manufactured there, significantly more than in the UK or Italy. Bosch is responding to this rising demand.

Robert Bosch has won orders from Apple to supply the next iPhone with some of its motion sensors, according to a person familiar with the deal, a potential blow to InvenSense, currently the main supplier of those smartphone components.

TetraVue, a company setting out to arm autonomous cars with ultra high-resolution 3D image-capturing smarts, announced it has raised $10 million from Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Nautilus Venture Partners, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and Foxconn.

Among its early backers are technology group Samsung, German engineer Bosch and Hermann Hauser, the founder of Cambridge-based chip designer ARM.

Bosch said revenue rose 44% to an all-time high of EUR70.6 billion ($79.9 billion) last year helped by sales of car safety and assistance systems but cautioned that momentum had slowed at the start of 2016.

In 2015, the Bosch Group recorded sales of over 70 billion euros for the first time, according to preliminary figures. The company succeeded in increasing revenue by approximately 10% last year. Earnings also further improved.

The new members added to the council include Leopold Beer, regional president Asia Pacific for Bosch Sensortec, Genda Hu, CEO of FocalTech Systems, Young Sohn, president and chief strategic officer of Samsung Electronics, Howard Yang, chairman and CEO of Montage Technology, and Charlie Zhi, president and CEO of Brite Semiconductor.

Hillcrest Labs and Bosch Sensortec have announced a partnership to launch a new sensor solution for head-mounted displays (HMDs).

After months of speculation, Bosch has confirmed it will exit the crystalline solar sector.

The Bosch Group has inaugurated its new EUR530 million photovoltaics competence center in Arnstadt, Germany. The facility includes the company's solar energy division headquarters as well as R&D, PV cell and module production, and a training center under one roof. Together with an adjacent ingot and wafer manufacturing plant, Bosch covers all the steps in the crystalline-silicon value chain at this location.

Menlo is a prototype mobile device with a capacitive touch screen (4.1-inch diagonal, 800x480) running Microsoft Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 which incorporates a Bosch BMA150 3-axis accelerometer and Bosch BMP085 digital pressure sensor (barometer)