According to Intel and Micron, the 25nm, 8Gb device is currently sampling, and is expected to enter mass production before the second half of 2010.

SanDisk beat analysts' estimates as sales for memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras, USB flash drives and other electronics climbed 22% from the third quarter to the fourth quarter.

In 2009, TSMC topped the list of foundries with US$9.0 billion in sales. TSMC's sales were about 3X that of UMC, which in turn had more than the combined foundry sales of Chartered and SMIC in 2009.

Apple's iPad device may significantly increase demand for components such as touch screens and memory chips, especially if it succeeds in creating a new product category and spawning competitors, according to industry analysts.

The Japanese conglomerate, whose business encompasses everything from memory chips to household electronics to nuclear power plants, has said it booked a much smaller loss in the October-December quarter than a year earlier.

Korea Exchange Bank has confirmed that the creditors of Hynix Semiconductor failed to receive any bids for their stake in the chip maker by the deadline.

Currently Seagate makes a Pulsar SSD with a 3Gbit/s SATA interface. It fits in a 2.5-inch HDD slot in a disk drive enclosure. A PCIe-connected SSD fits into a server as a plug-in flash card and that's where LSI comes in.

A person familiar with the situation has told Dow Jones Newswires that the stake sale process hasn't been going well with no particular company showing an interest in the Hynix stake.

Toshiba, which competes with Samsung Electronics in chips and with Areva and General Electric in nuclear power, is likely to miss the market consensus figure for its quarterly operating profit, according to the Nikkei business daily.

A vice president of Samsung Electronics has committed suicide. He joined Samsung in 1992 and mostly worked at its semiconductor and flash memory division.

Since the new device apparently will rely heavily on NAND flash for its computing and storage needs, and because the most recent products Apple has produced have tended to sell very well, the NAND flash industry may be looking at a major stabilizing factor.

"These comments beg the question how will the equipment market grow 50-plus-percent in 2010 with no new fabs and no new capacity additions, when it dropped nearly 50% in 2009 with no new fabs and no new capacity additions?"

Abu Dhabi's ATIC, which helped create Globalfoundries when AMD spun off its manufacturing business, is looking to assume full control of the company.

Hynix Semiconductor has agreed to pay US$3.32 million to settle a claim in the US accusing the company of price-fixing on memory chips, according to a US court record.

China's Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. (AMEC) also made a payment to Applied Materials of an undisclosed amount, and the parties agreed to collaborate on projects in the future.

Rambus, which designs memory chips, said that an administrative judge for the US International Trade Commission has ruled that graphics chip maker Nvidia has violated three of its patents.

Under the terms of the agreement, government officials said Samsung must build four manufacturing plants in Ontario, promising 16,000 direct and indirect jobs over the next five years.

MoneyToday, citing unnamed industry sources, said that Samsung was expected to set this year's capital expenditure for the semiconductor business at about 7 trillion won (US$6.1 billion). The Korean vendor is also planning a new chip production line in its domestic plant, marking the first time in years that it would add a line.

"We could have done a lot more business," said AMD CEO Dirk Meyer. "We are seeing progress both in the delivery of wafers and the underlying yields. But we are constrained today."

450mm production fabs could be pushed out to 2015 or 2016 - or two years later than some had hoped, according to analysts. And EUV may miss the insertion into the 16nm node, thereby pushing the technology out to the 13nm logic node in 2015.

A settlement between Samsung Electronics Co. (005930.SE) and Rambus Inc. (RMBS) in their long-running legal battles could push co-defendents Micron Technology Inc. (MU) and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. (000660.SE) to do the same, instead of risking billions in potential damages.

Both Seagate and rival Western Digital have seen demand for disk drives return even as supplies of the devices remain low, pushing up profits.

Hard disk drive maker Western Digital has posted a sharp increase in its fiscal second-quarter profit as sales grew amid a recovery in the technology sector and the company trimmed costs.

We closed the year as planned with improved sales and strong bookings, as the semiconductor business recovers driven by technology and capacity buys from major Foundry customers and the memory market segments, according to ASML president and CEO Eric Meurice.