The Indian government has established a committee to identify technology and potential investors that could set up India's first two commercial semiconductor wafer fabs, the country's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said. The ministry put the rough cost of the two fabs at US$5 billion.

The event was postponed due to the ongoing recovery efforts in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and at the request of Japanese government agencies to help conserve energy resources during the summer months. SEMICON Japan 2011 is now scheduled for December 7-9 in the same venue as PVJapan.

Smartphones and tablets will be the first devices to use ARM's upcoming Cortex-A15 processor, and will be available starting late 2012 or early 2013, said James Bruce, the US mobile segment manager at ARM.

"2011 started strong, with customer demand in January and February tracking our expectations for a first quarter of above-seasonal growth," said Rich Templeton, TI CEO. "But the Japan earthquake that's taken such a heartbreaking human toll in the country also disrupted local demand starting in mid-March and impaired operations at two of our factories there."

The company said its customers are asking for a higher number of shipments in the second half of calendar year 2011, compared with the first half. Analysts view Lam's top customer, Samsung Electronics', recent decision to cut capital spending as hurting its fourth-quarter results.

According to Samsung South Korea, the smartphone maker "will be releasing a smartphone that boasts performance levels matching desktop PCs." That's because this upcoming device will come equipped with a dual-core processor running at 2GHz.

LED maker Cree reported a profit on Tuesday that missed Wall Street estimates and forecast lower-than-expected earnings in the current quarter due to high inventories and falling prices, sending its shares lower in after-hours trade.

A trial over Rambus' antitrust lawsuit against Micron Technology and Hynix Semiconductor claiming US$4.3 billion in alleged damages was scheduled for June 7.

South Korea's LG Electronics has diversified chip suppliers for home appliance products to Hynix Semiconductor and Panasonic away from Toshiba after Japan's devastating earthquake last month.

Infineon will go into specifics concerning the past quarter, the outlook for the current quarter and the expectations for the fiscal year 2011 when presenting the figures for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2011 on May 3, 2011.

Toyota has now resumed car production at all of its plants in Japan for the first time since last month's earthquake and tsunami. However, the car manufacturer said that production would be half of its normal level because of parts shortages.

Samsung is looking to sell the unit for US$1.5 billion, but it may consider a deal under US$1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. A potential buyer is Seagate Technology.

Sequans Communications has announced the pricing of its initial public offering of American Depositary Shares (ADSs), representing 7,700,000 ordinary shares, at a price to the public of US$10.00 per ADS. The ADSs began trading on April 15 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Shin-Etsu Chemical has said that it will partially resume production at an earthquake-stricken silicon wafer factory in Fukushima Prefecture within a week or two.

Intel and Micron Technology will make an announcement about NAND flash on April 14. The companies have not disclosed the details. "I believe that they will announce the finalization of their Singapore agreement-IMFS-that will bring up 25nm first and then 20nm later," said Alan Niebel, CEO of Web-Feet Research.

Zoom Technologies has signed a licensing pact with chipmaker Qualcomm, allowing the Chinese mobile phone maker to develop and sell 3G devices using Qualcomm's chip patents.

Bruce Sohn, First Solar's president of operations, may pursue work as chief executive of another solar company when he steps down at the end of this month, an analyst said. A First Solar spokesman said he couldn't comment on Sohn's departure.

ASML has said first-quarter orders fell 27% as clients took more time to place orders because of disruptions by the Japanese earthquake. The quake is hurting the business of some ASML clients.

Intel has designed a handset that may be manufactured by China's ZTE, according to people with knowledge of the plan. The phone, based on a version of Intel's Atom microprocessor, may go on sale in China.

Freescale Semiconductor has entered into a strategic alliance with Fuji Electric to collaborate on insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) technology and products for hybrid electric and electric vehicles (HEV and EV).

Last fall, industry analysts predicted there would be an oversupply of manufacturing capacity due to a market correction following the strong revenue posted in 2010, but following the earthquake, tsunami, and now nuclear crisis in Japan, the landscape looks different.

Japanese authorities have raised the severity rating of their nuclear crisis to the highest level, seven. The decision reflects the total release of radiation at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which is ongoing, rather than a sudden deterioration.

A Business Insider report cited discussions between Avian Securities and one of Apple's parts manufacturers that suggest we might not see a next generation iPhone until the end of 2011 or even early 2012. And recently, a Japanese-language site, Macotakara.jp, uncovered a report that revealed Apple hasn't yet ordered components for the iPhone 5.

Chinese silicon wafer producer Jiangsu Huantai, a joint venture partner of MEMC Electronic Materials, aims to go public in 2012, according to company chairman Wang Lubao. Huantai expects to begin manufacturing LED materials later in 2011.

Dutch chip maker NXP is not in takeover talks, its chief executive said, although he would consider an offer like the one Texas Instruments made for National Semiconductor.

Toyota announced they would suspend production for five days and slow production over the "next few weeks," because of shortfall in parts availability. Honda meanwhile said it would extend a production slowdown for a week.

LDK Solar has announced a business investment of approximately US$40 million to establish a new manufacturing plant in Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province (China). This new manufacturing facility will have capacity to supply two million 2-inch equivalent pieces of sapphire wafers per year and be positioned to capture the growing opportunities in the LED industry.

NXP Semiconductors is almost an US$8 billion market capitalization company, about twice the size of National Semiconductor. On the company's last earnings call, it predicted that 70 million NFC-enabled phones would ship in 2011 and 150 million next year. NXP is the chip that will power a majority of those phones.

Freescale Semiconductor won't reopen a seriously damaged chip factory in Sendai, northern Japan, the company said on April 6. The plant had been due to close at the end of 2011.

Consumer electronics giant Sony, chipmakers Elpida Memory and Renesas, and electronics firms Panasonic and Toshiba have all said that production at some plants in northern Japan had been halted again due to power cuts triggered by a major aftershock that shook the region on April 7.

Skyworks Solutions will get a lot less revenue from selling parts for the Apple iPhone 5 than it did for the current generation of the phone, according to Charter Equity analyst Edward Snyder. For technical reasons, the company is losing business to both TriQuint and Avago, Snyder said.

The move leaves some to wonder if the silicon foundry giant is gradually moving into the IC-packaging world, thereby competing against Amkor, ASE and other subcontractors. Rick Cassidy, president of TSMC North America, said TSMC remains focused on the foundry market. But "lines are blurring" between some parts of the wafer manufacturing and packaging processes, Cassidy said.