The new group made up of state-owned automakers and other related manufacturers will promote common standards and accelerate research among related state-owned companies.

2011 will likely see the release of a more powerful series of smart phones thanks to a new Snapdragon chip from Qualcomm. And of course there will be another set of Apple iPhones and iPads next year, which will have their own ARM processor, most probably running at faster speeds than the 1GHz at present.

Unlike traditional silicon-based solar cells, the film is composed of metal nanoparticles embedded in a transparent composite matrix, and operates on a different principle. EnSol is now developing the product with help from the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Samsung Electronics said it would establish a 836-million-dollar fund to help South Korean contractors. The "mutual development" fund would be set up jointly with Industrial Bank of Korea, and was aimed at helping contractors receive low-interest loans for R&D from October.

A leaked slide of Intel's nine-month solid state drive (SSD) roadmap shows a 400GB multi-level cell (MLC) enterprise solid state drive due in the first quarter of 2011.

LDK Solar is planning to build a solar manufacturing facility with 1 gigawatt of solar cell and 500 megawatts of solar module capacity. The manufacturing facility is expected to begin production in the second quarter of 2011, backed by US$368 million in financing for up to three years from a Chinese lender.

Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners and Highland Capital Partners represent the traditional venture capitalists behind Smooth-Stone. They have been joined by ARM, Texas Instruments and Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC).

An Apple supply manager has been accused of giving confidential information to Asian suppliers in exchange for kickbacks during a three-year scheme detailed in court filings made available over the weekend.

"This acquisition is another step in our strategic expansion in the Asia Pacific region and, in particular, increases our scale and scope in the Australian market...". Australia-based itX distributes software, hardware and services from the world's leading suppliers including Oracle, IBM, HP, VMware, Apple, Citrix, Red Hat and Trend Micro.

IBM and Infineon Technologies have closed a transaction to sell 100% of the share capital of Altis Semiconductor to a new corporation. They have also entered into supply agreements with Altis, and will continue to use Altis' production facility in France.

Hynix said in a filing to the Korea Exchange that it plans to invest 677.0 billion won (US$572.7 million) to expand an existing facility.

Just six weeks ago, it didn't even have a factory. Now it has orders from customers to take 20 megawatts worth of panels.

The Medfield platform will include a power-efficient version of the Atom processor, which will be integrated inside a chip code-named Penwell, according to a document originally posted on Intel's website, which is still available on Google cache.

With semiconductor sales soaring to a possible 30% increase this year, companies are ramping up capacity to meet current and expected demand. But the capital invested during the balance of 2010 will not impact actual capacity until sometime in 2011.

Electronics distributor Avnet has reported record sales of US$5.21 billion for the quarter ended July 3, 2010, besting consensus analyst expectations. "The demand for electronic components remained strong across all three regions as better-than-normal sequential growth resulted in year-over-year revenue growth of 47% this quarter," said company CEO Roy Vallee.

LDK Solar reported Tuesday that it earned net income of US$45 million, or 36 cents per American Depositary Share, in the quarter that ended June 30. That compared with a net loss of US$216.9 million, or US2.03 per ADS, when it took a hefty writedown on plummeting inventory value in the year-ago quarter.

The mid-year edition of the SEMI Capital Equipment Forecast predicts that sales of global semiconductor equipment are growing in all regions in 2010. Taiwan is again, projected to be the largest market with US$9.18 billion.

Scientists at Ohio State University have demonstrated a form of plastic computer memory that uses the spin of electrons to read and write data.

SunPower reported their second quarter results today and here is a rundown of the highlights for the solar panel manufacturer and solar power provider.

NXP Semiconductors opened trading Friday (Aug. 6) on the Nasdaq exchange, its new shares seesawing with the rest of the turbulent equity market.

SMIC, China's largest foundry chipmaker, is close to receiving tens of millions of dollars from the China government in a move that could help its earnings this year.

Kyocera is ramping up its annual production to 600MW this year - an increase of 50% over the previous year - to meet growing demand in countries such as Japan, US, Germany, France and Italy, the company says.

Experts on the nation's electricity system point to a frighteningly steep increase in non-disaster-related outages affecting at least 50,000 consumers.

The company will ship the dual-core QSD8672 chip with CPU cores running at up to 1.5GHz, said Mark Frankel, vice president of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. The chip could go into smartphones, tablets and low-cost laptops, he said.

The OMAP4430 chip will deliver double the performance of existing single-core chips from the OMAP3 family. This will allow applications to run faster on mobile devices, said Robert Tolbert, director of product management for the OMAP smartphone business at TI.

Spansion on August 6 filed three complaints against Samsung, alleging patent violations in a broad range of Samsung flash memory products that go into devices like tablets and smartphones. A Spansion spokesman declined to comment on which products those may be. However, Apple's iPad and iPhone 4 use Samsung flash memory.

Samsung started a 30MW solar cell production line for research and development last September and will incrementally increase capacity to 130MW next year, company spokesman James Chung said today.

...and if Apple misses out, it will likely never get another chance to acquire the wireless technology necessary to do so because the entire mobile component value-chain is consolidating and the remaining players are giants.

Hynix will pay an estimated US$422.89 million for the 19.3% stake in the China-based joint venture, Hynix-Numonyx Semiconductor, according to Micron.

Chip equipment maker UMS, which counts Applied Materials as its biggest client, will boost capacity utilisation to 85% in the third quarter from 65% in a booming industry.

It took firefighters from Boise about a half an hour to put out the fire, which broke out in a building that helps support the company's development of solar panels.

A new solar energy capture technology is able to generate electricity from light and heat at the same time, producing double the efficiency of existing solar panels.

Infineon Technologies is in discussions with interested parties about a transaction concerning the segment Wireless Solutions (WLS), according to the company.