Although more flash production capacity is coming online, SanDisk CEO Sanjay Mehrotra downplayed the risk that oversupply will hurt prices this year.

On Semiconductor plans to invest more than US$30 million to expand capacity and capabilities at its 8-inch wafer manufacturing facility in Gresham, Oregon. The facility remains the company's most advanced wafer fab - with current production technologies down to 0.11-micron.

Cheap sensors and network availability are not only making individual cars smarter, but they're also boosting the brainpower the environment cars drive in.

First Solar reported a 10% rise in fourth-quarter earnings, beating Wall Street estimates, but the company lowered the top end of its 2011 sales forecast and its shares fell 4.7% after hours.

"Applied's solid first quarter was driven by continued strength in semiconductor systems and record profitability in solar," said Mike Splinter, company chairman and CEO. "We see momentum building in our end markets and expect our company's fiscal year revenue to be more than US$11 billion, exceeding our previous record by over a billion dollars."

The processor used in the smartphones, the PXA920, was introduced by Marvell a year ago, and Marvell said it's the first single-chip offering for TD-SCDMA.

Hynix Semiconductor said in a regulatory filing that it would spend KRW637 billion (US$567.7 million) by March to expand and upgrade its existing plant and conduct R&D.

Hans Stork joins ON Semiconductor after three years with Applied Materials as Group VP of the Si Systems Group and six years with Texas Instruments as the company's CTO and Senior VP of Si Technology Development.

"Recent data points have circulated in the past weeks suggesting OmniVision's BSI (backside illumination) yields have been adversely impacted out of TSMC, which could be backed-up on strong demand for general CMOS image sensors into smartphones and tablets," said analyst Doug Freedman of Gleacher & Co. in a new report.

Toshiba has developed a new flip-flop circuit using 40nm CMOS process that the company claims will reduce power consumption in mobile equipment. Measured data verifies that the power dissipation of the new flip-flop is up to 77% less than that of a conventional flip-flop and that it achieves a 24% reduction in total power consumption when applied to a wireless LAN chip.

Shares of wireless chipmaker Anadigics are down US$0.57, almost 8%, at US$5.96, after the company reported 4Q results ahead of expectations, but forecast a surprise net loss this quarter and much lower-than-expected revenue, citing "softness in China" and an inventory pile-up.

CSR and Zoran have entered into a merger agreement under which Zoran will merge with CSR for an equity value equivalent to approximately US$679 million. The merged company will provide differentiated, integrated technology that addresses the rapidly-growing market for connected, location-aware multimedia devices including handsets, digital cameras and home entertainment equipment.

"Leading-edge capacity excess, driven by Globalfoundries' expansion primarily, means pricing is going to come down," said Intel CEO Paul Otellini. "As leading-edge pricing comes down, so does the trailing-edge [pricing], hollowing out the business. That means real trouble for Globalfoundries and TSMC over the next few years." He conceded that Samsung was a different case with its memory and logic operations.

Micron Technology has acquired Canon's interest in Tech Semiconductor Singapore for about US$121 million, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Micron also seems to be taking the lead in its joint venture with Intel.

The chipmaker made the announcement Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress, where it also introduced mobile communications chips for phones. Medfield is Intel's second smartphone processor. The first, Moorestown, did not have much success in the market due to power consumption too high for smartphones.

Samsung Fine Chemicals agreed with MEMC to set up an equally owned venture for a poly-Si plant in South Korea. They will build the facility on an existing Samsung Fine Chemicals property in Ulsan, according to a joint e-mail statement.

Just as tablets with dual-core processors start to hit shelves, chip makers are now shipping samples of quad-core chips that could make the devices even faster. Nevertheless, quad-core chips could be overkill as use of all cores could drain battery quickly...

"Shares of MIPS are selling off today because ARM announced a subscription license agreement with Broadcom," said Gary Mobley, an analyst with The Benchmark Company, in a report. "Because of Broadcom's heavy use of MIPS cores, Broadcom is MIPS' largest customer. We estimate Broadcom's royalties paid to MIPS represent 35% of MIPS' royalty revenue, or 15% of total revenue."

The new naming system will be first applied to the dual-core processor codenamed Orion, which was announced in September 2010. Carrying the name Exynos 4210, Samsung's 1GHz dual-core application processor is scheduled for production in March.

What Intel CEO Paul Otellini said would rejuvenate his company, Cisco CEO John Chambers thinks could kill everything in its path.

Chip gear maker Veeco Instruments expects a longer sales cycle and forecast first-quarter results below analysts' estimates.

Intel seems very optimistic about its upcoming smartphone core, dubbed Medfield, but so far remains tight-lipped on possible partners or any further information besides saying that it is a "pretty exciting" time for them.

Solar Frontier, a unit of Japanese refiner Showa Shell Sekiyu,said it began production at a 100 billion yen(US$1.2 billion)thin-film solar module factory.

"We are excited to complete the transition to the next generation 2Xnm NAND components which reiterates our strategy of producing high performance SSDs at the most attractive price point available for consumer applications," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology.

Intel has announced that the company is sampling its 32nm "Medfield" handset chip with customers. Scheduled for introduction this year, the Medfield chip will extend the performance benefits of Intel architecture into a low-power solution specifically designed for the smartphone market segment.

ProMOS has been negotiating with the Taiwan authorities and banks to improve its financial standing, a precondition for the firm to join the Elpida-Powerchip business integration.

Freescale Semiconductor has filed to go public on February 18, seeking to raise money to pay down its debt load.

The memory-chip industry will keep a lid on capital expenditures this year, helping avoid a repeat of the production glut that plagued the industry until 2010, Micron Technology CEO Steve Appleton said.

OCZ Technology, a provider of solid-state drives (SSD) for computing devices and systems, has signed an agreement with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) for asset-based financing of up to US$25 million.