Fab equipment spending for front-end facilities is expected to be flat in 2013, remaining around US$31.7 billion, increasing to US$39.3 billion in 2014 - a 24% increase.

Intel's next CEO is likely to shepherd the top chipmaker into a growing contract-manufacturing business, a strategic shift that could lead to a deal with Apple Inc and give it a fighting chance to make inroads in the mobile arena.

Spansion and United Microelectronics (UMC) have announced the joint development of a 40nm process that integrates UMC's 40nm LP logic process with Spansion proprietary embedded Charge Trap (eCT) Flash memory technology. As part of this non-exclusive agreement, UMC is licensed to manufacture products based on this technology for Spansion.

"Led by continuing strength in the Americas, the global semiconductor industry has built on its momentum from the end of 2012 with an encouraging start to 2013, but ongoing economic uncertainty is holding back more robust growth," said Brian Toohey, president and CEO of Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).

Texas Instruments, the largest maker of analog chips, raised the lower end of its forecasts for first-quarter sales and profit, as customers increase orders ahead of a projected rebound in electronics demand.

Industry consolidation to just three big DRAM suppliers and a reduction in capital expenditures among these manufacturers helped propel DRAM average selling prices (ASPs) up 13% year over year in January. Capex budgets are also being trimmed for NAND flash (though not nearly as much as DRAM), and that, along with ongoing unit demand, has put upward pressure on ASPs for these memory devices as well.

SanDisk has announced that the iNAND Extreme Embedded Flash Drive (EFD) supports tablet reference designs based on the Nvidia Tegra 4.

The board of directors of Toshiba has nominated Hisao Tanaka, corporate senior executive VP of Toshiba, for the post of president and CEO of the company.

Growth in the giant China manufacturing sector in February withdrew from the highest point in nearly two years despite a fourth consecutive month of expansion, a private survey showed Monday, as foreign demand remained unsteady.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association has announced that its board of directors appointed two new members, Jong H. Oh of SK hynix and Hung Vuong of Qualcomm.

Qualcomm has announced a pair of new mobile processors designed for entry-level and mid-range smartphones. Expected in handsets later in 2013, the Snapdragon 200 and 400 balance the high-end 600 and 800 processors introduced in January.

The 55nm LPe 1V is especially suited for high-volume, battery-operated mobile consumer devices, as well as a broad range of green or energy-saving products. PDK and EDA tools are available now, along with MPW shuttle availability.

South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix has appointed its research and development (R&D) chief Park Sung-wook as the new chief executive.

Wireless is set to be the leading growth segment for semiconductor spending among original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in 2013, with expenditures rising by a double-digit margin to support the burgeoning markets for smartphones, tablets and mobile infrastructure gear, according to IHS iSuppli.

GlobalFoundries is expected to ramp up to 7nm process technology by 2017.

As part of its broader restructuring measures, Fujitsu said it will cut 5,000 jobs, including 3,000 workers in Japan and 2,000 overseas, partly through early retirement offers. Fujitsu currently has about 170,000 workers world-wide.

Cymer and ASML continue to expect the transaction to close in the first half of 2013.

Globalfoundries has announced a partnership with Adapteva to offer the company's Epiphany IV microarchitecture to customers using Globalfoundries' leading-edge 28nm-SLP process technology.

Fujitsu and Panasonic are in the final stage of talks to go ahead with a merger of their large-scale integrated chip (LSI) operations into a new company, NHK reported Friday.

Toshiba has subsequently brought this high level performance to its original microcontrollers and to ARM core-based microcontrollers. The newly-developed NANO Flash-100 achieves a zero-wait cycle during random access at 100MHz operation.

ARM, the designer of chips for leading smartphones, beat analyst expectations with full-year profits up 20%. A presentation to investors by CEO Warren East was dominated by talk of the 'post-PC' era, in which the market for Internet-enabled devices will spread into areas such as security and healthcare.

It's clear Samsung is serious about expanding its footprint in Silicon Valley. In December the Korean company announced it is building a 1.1-million-square-foot R&D center in San Jose and an incubator in Palo Alto. This week it also unveiled a "Strategy and Innovation Center" in Menlo Park, which Sohn oversees.

As expected, Qualcomm cashed in on smartphone sales and the chipsets that go with them. In a statement, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said the company is positioned for strong growth courtesy of its Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and 600 processors.

Integrated Device Technology (IDT) has announced the availability of what it claims is the industry's first complete chipset for DDR4 load reduced dual inline memory modules (LRDIMMs), including both a registered clock driver and data buffer devices.

Worldwide microprocessor sales are expected to regain strength in 2013 and grow 12% to US$65.3 billion after rising just 5% in 2012 to US$58.2 billion due to weakness in standard PCs and the shaky global economy, according to IC Insights.

The new plant will take approximately two years to build, and it will create 3,500 construction jobs, as well as 800 full-time jobs inside the plant once its complete.

Apple is working on "a new product" aimed at the low-end of the market that will be built around a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

Samsung plans to invest US$1.7 billion in expanding and fitting out its operations in Kunshan, a fast-growing manufacturing hub west of Shanghai, the Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

Agilent Technologies has launched the N6465A test application for embedded multimedia card (eMMC) compliance test in response to a new version of the JEDEC eMMC specification.

Intel has presented Professor Stephen Hawking with a birthday gift, a 300mm wafer with the message "Happy Birthday Stephen Hawking" inscribed hundreds of times in copper letters defined using Intel's 32nm manufacturing procress.

ASML has warned of a weak first quarter but said it sees a recovery in the following months as smartphone and tablet makers shift to the next generation of chips.

Japan's economy minister surprised financial markets on Tuesday by warning of the potential ill effects of a sharply weaker yen in a rare rhetorical departure from years of attempts by Tokyo to talk the currency down.

InvenSense , which makes gyroscopes and other motion sensors, plans to sell chips within a couple of years that let smartphones guide their owners up and down escalators, through subway stations and up to specific cubicles within skyscrapers - all places that GPS signals do not currently work well.

Shares of Sharp and other suppliers of iPhone parts to Apple have fallen after reports of a cut in orders for the iPhone 5.

The M500 SSD utilizes Micron's 20nm multilevel cell (MLC) NAND flash to achieve terabyte-class capacity and enable a new level of SSD price competitiveness; the 960GB Crucial M500 SSD will be initially priced under US$600.