Accounting irregularities have plunged the Japanese conglomerate company Toshiba into a crisis, with several key board members stepping down, including CEO Hisao Tanaka.

Tsinghua Unigroup, controlled by China's Tsinghua University, has agreed to invest US$100 million in a mobile operating system start-up founded by Mozilla Corp's former China head, according to a company announcement.

"We expect to see continued overall business strength in the second half of 2015 due to increased demand from memory and foundry customers compared with our previous expectations," ASML president and CEO Peter Wennink said.

Sales of PCs that used Micron's memory chips dropped faster than the company expected in 2015 triggering a 50% stock plunge. That drop helped set the stage for Micron, which is known for buying other companies' chip operations, to become a target.

The deal, if true, could have broad implications for Micron's technology partner, Intel and NAND-chip competitor SanDisk.

Growth in the world's second largest economy, China, beat expectations in the second quarter, but it was still the weakest showing since the global financial crisis.

SanDisk has shipped more than two billion microSD cards since it started commercial shipment of the technology ten years ago.

Applied Materials is using an industry trade show this week to try to persuade analysts that the company will be just as well off without merging with fellow tool-maker Tokyo Electron.

Qualcomm is undergoing major restructuring and one side-effect of the overhaul is that some 4,000 jobs might be slashed.

Hard-disk drive storage provider Seagate on Monday lowered its revenue and margin guidance ahead of the release of its fourth quarter earnings report later this month.

Tsinghua Unigroup Chairman Zhao Weiguo signaled the company is interested in Micron Technology after the Wall Street Journal reported the Chinese company made a US$23 billion bid for the US semiconductor maker.

Sony said it expects to raise as much as JPY300 billion (US$2.4 billion) after setting a price for new common shares it is selling to raise money for boosting chipmaking capacity.

Intel is set slip to third place in a ranking of chip companies compiled by Semico Research, based on forecast capital expenditure in 2015.

Tumbling markets and economic uncertainty in China pose a risk to major chipmakers such as Qualcomm that derive a big portion of their sales from the world's second-largest economy.

"S6 didn't sell as well as the market had hoped for, partly because of continued outperforming of iPhones combined with the supply constraint," said Greg Roh, a Seoul-based analyst at HMC Investment Securities Co. "Sales sharply missed the market expectation, which implies that overall technology industry demand for smartphones, TVs and PCs is weakening."

Doubts over the sales prospects of Samsung Electronics' new flagship smartphones are damping expectations of a rapid turnaround for the South Korean giant, even though profit likely continues to recover from last year's troughs.

Cricket Semiconductor, a company set up with the purpose of building and operating $1 billion analog and power semiconductor wafer fab in India has been in talks with state government of Telangana, according to a report in the New Indian Express.

Shares in Japan's Toshiba fell 5 percent in early Monday trade on fears that an ongoing third-party investigation into past accounting practices was finding more irregularities than previously expected.

Xilinx has announced its collaboration with China Mobile Research Institute for the development of the next generation fronthaul interface (NGFI).

Intel President Ren矇e James is among several top executives who announced plans to resign from the chip giant. Three other executives from various divisions will also leave the company.

French microchip maker STMicro signed a US$500 million with China's Huawei on Thursday to bolster its supply relationship with the Chinese telecom equipment provider, the French government said in a statement.

Micron Technology was bullish about the coming year at a conference in May, but its latest quarterly earnings released in late June have investors less optimistic.

Sony said the sale would help it to finance increased production within its image sensor business.

Shares of chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are up 7 cents, or 3%, at $2.41, after PC and gaming gear enthusiast site KitGuru this afternoon said the company is attracting buyout interest from Microsoft.

Xilinx CEO Moshe Gavrielov is trying to take advantage of increased interest in his company since Intel said it would acquire his main rival in the programmable logic-chip market for US$16.7 billion.

Samsung Electronics saw the sales of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) reach to a record level in the first quarter of 2015, industry data showed Monday, with its market share also hitting its highest since 2011.

Hedge fund Jana Partners said in April Qualcomm should spin off the chip business from its patent-licensing business to improve shareholder value, calling the chip business "essentially worthless".

Samsung Electronics recently signed a new SSD supply contract for its 256GB SSDs to be used in the laptops of major suppliers such as Apple and Microsoft.

Intel's Cannonlake, originally slated for 2016 and later 2017, is now on hold indefinitely. Instead, Intel's current processors - of the Skylake platform - will be succeeded by the less drastic Kaby Lake platform.

A former executive vice president at Qualcomm was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison and fined $500,000 on charges related to a three-year-long insider trading scheme.

Micron Technology said it expects a further decline in prices of chips used in personal computers, and forecast revenue for the current quarter well below market estimates.

The government is telling local companies and Chinese news media that it plans to invest as much as 1 trillion yuan ($161 billion) over 10 years to develop chips, about as much as Intel spends per decade on facilities and research and development.

Toshiba's chief executive fought back against shareholder calls for his resignation, promising an overhaul of a corporate culture that had overlooked accounting malpractices for years until they were revealed by a whistleblower.

The Japanese company's Synergy Platform joins similar efforts by such vendors as Intel, ARM, Broadcom and MediaTek.

The bidding war for Integrated Silicon Solution (ISSI) intensified with rival chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor further sweetening its offer to US$22.60 per share.

Apple has renewed its exclusive rights to use Liquidmetal Technologies' unique metal alloys in its line of products, according to a document filed today with the SEC. The new agreement extends Apple's relationship with Liquidmetal Technologies until February 5, 2016.

American chip manufacturers argue that, without the trade deal, they will be squeezed out of the growing Asian market for computer chips by competitors in countries like China.