In a ruling issued Thursday, the European Union's General Court rejected Intel's appeal of a EUR1.06 billion (US$1.44 billion) penalty for antitrust violations. Instead, the EU General Court upheld the record-breaking penalty against the US computer chip giant, which had been issued in 2009 by the EU Commission.

Broadcom has announced it is exploring strategic alternatives for its cellular baseband business, including a potential sale or wind-down.

More than a year after announcing plans to combine their struggling system chip operations, Fujitsu and Panasonic are finally launching their new merged company with the help of Japanese government money.

NXP Semiconductors has announced its investment in Senseg, a leader in next-generation spatial haptic feedback technology.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world's biggest contract chipmaker, is expected to expand its global market share to more than 50 percent this year and to 60 percent in the next few years, benefiting primarily from its leadership position in advanced technologies, Credit Suisse AG said yesterday.

Taiwan's semiconductor pioneer Morris Chang on Thursday said the protracted protest against the trade pact with Beijing is casting a gloom over the nation's future, calling for a rational and peaceful solution.

STMicroelectronics and rivals such as NXP Semiconductor and Qualcomm are battling to be picked to provide the brains for the various products in the hot segment.

Qualcomm has announced the management transition of Steve Mollenkopf to CEO and Paul E. Jacobs to executive chairman of the board of directors.

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

More than 450 employees at NXP Semiconductors wafer fab in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, have held a two-hour strike in protest at stalled wage negotiations, according to local reports.

Intel is in the process of buying smartwatch startup Basis, as part of the tech giant's new focus on wearables and the Internet of Things.

Broadcom has announced that Datang Mobile, a core subsidiary of the Datang Telecom Technology and Industry Group, has selected Broadcom's dual-mode TD-SCDMA/TD-LTE system-on-chip (SoC) to develop a new family of enterprise and residential small cell solutions.

Amtech Systems, a supplier of production and automation systems and related supplies for the manufacture of solar cells, semiconductors, and sapphire and silicon wafers, has received approximately US$10 million in new solar orders.

Intel is expecting its next Atom tablet chip, code-named Cherry Trail, to be in devices by the end of 2014, the company said this week.

Chipmaker Avago Technologies said it expects current-quarter sales to decline 3-6% from the first quarter as it lost revenue from a smartphone maker, which analysts said could be Apple.

Fujitsu, NTT Docomo and NEC will dissolve by March a joint venture for developing core chips for smartphones. The venture, Access Network Technology, was formed in August 2012 to develop baseband chips.

GCT Semiconductor has licensed the Cadence Tensilica ConnX BBE16 digital signal processing (DSP) core for a next-generation chipset targeting mobile applications.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association has announced the publication of Release 6 of the DDR3 Serial Presence Detect (SPD) document. The updated standard describes new memory timing parameters and enables higher capacity memory modules.

The Gobi 9x30 is the world's first commercially announced cellular modem for automotive based on the 20nm technology node with support for global carrier aggregation deployments up to 40MHz in both LTE FDD and TDD modes.

Toshiba has developed what it claims is the world's fastest device controller for embedded NAND flash memory modules compliant with the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver.2.0 and UFS Unified Memory Extension (UME) Ver.1.0 standards defined by JEDEC Solid State Technology Association (JEDEC).

International Rectifier (IR) has commenced initial production at its new ultra-thin wafer processing facility in Singapore. Wafer thinning, metallization, testing and additional proprietary wafer level processing are undertaken at the new 60,000 square foot manufacturing site which receives processed wafers from IR's internal fabs and foundry partners.

RF Micro Devices and TriQuint Semiconductor have announced a definitive merger agreement under which the companies will combine in an all-stock transaction. To reflect the nature of this transaction as a merger of equals, the new company will have a new name and shared leadership team.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor with integrated LTE. Additionally, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor is featured in the Samsung Galaxy Grand 2, bringing LTE connectivity in mainstream smartphones.

InvenSense has announced a turnkey wearable platform solution intended to substantially shorten the time-to-market for any OEM or ODM.

Hillcrest Labs has announced that Oppo, a China-based CE manufacturer and smartphone OEM, is using Hillcrest's patented Freespace software to provide advanced motion-based functionality on their latest smartphones.

Qualcomm has leaped ahead of Apple in 64-bit mobile chip development with its first eight-core Snapdragon 615 chip for mobile devices, which has integrated LTE and 4K video rendering capabilities.

Renesas Electronics has developed what it claims is the industry's first 28-nanometer (nm) flash memory intellectual property (IP) for microcontrollers (MCUs) using a 28nm process technology.

Qualcomm is under investigation in China for allegedly overcharging and exploiting its market position, which will see the US chipmaker facing fines of over US$1 billion.

South Korean multinational conglomerates Samsung and LG are considering setting up units to manufacture electronic chips in India, following the government's clearance to build two such semiconductor units.

Samsung Electronics Co said a memory chip plant being built in China will start operations as planned in the first half of 2014 and the company will remain flexible about further investment in the factory.

AMD is rolling out its server CPU platform based on ARM's 64-bit technology - the first of such collaboration between the two firms. The Opteron A1100 series chip, codenamed Seattle, is fabricated using 28nm process technology, and the chip maker plans to sample it this quarter.

ARM has announced an enhanced suite of higher performance and more energy-efficient products specifically designed for the rapidly growing mid-range mobile and consumer electronics markets.

Chipmaker Microchip Technology said it would buy Supertex for US$394 million in cash to bolster its business that supplies to the medical, LED lighting, industrial and telecommunication industries.