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Sony Group on Thursday confirmed it is considering a plan to join with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in building a chip factory in the western Japanese prefecture of Kumamoto.
Nikkei Asian Review
Facebook rose to prominence over the past two decades with some of the world's most recognizable branding: a big blue-and-white letter F. No longer. On Thursday, the social networking giant took an unmistakable step toward an overhaul, de-emphasizing Facebook's name and rebranding itself as Meta.
New York Times
Total consolidated revenue was a quarterly record of KRW73.98 trillion (US$63.4 billion), a 10% increase from a year earlier, which was the previous high. Operating profit increased 26% from the previous quarter to KRW15.82 trillion, the second-highest ever, as favorable market conditions continued in the memory market while the foundry and display businesses achieved robust sales.
Company release
The global semiconductor chip shortage cost Volkswagen and Stellantis a combined 1.4 million vehicles in lost production in the third quarter, Europe's two biggest carmakers said on Thursday, though both reported some early signs of improvement.
Reuters
Personal consumption slowed sharply, due in part to a drop in outlays for cars, Commerce Department data showed Thursday. That subtracted 2.39 percentage points from gross domestic product growth and drove the decline in goods spending in the period, as automakers had a tough time keeping dealer lots full.
Bloomberg
Today at its inaugural Intel Innovation event, Intel returned to its developer roots, highlighting a renewed commitment to the community and a developer-first approach across software and hardware. Announcements spanning new products, developer tools and technologies underscore Intel's focus on empowering an open ecosystem, ensuring choice for developers to use the tools and environments they prefer, and building trust and partnership across cloud service providers, open source communities, startups and others.
Company release
SK Hynix is expected to acquire Key Foundry to strengthen its foundry business.
BusinessKorea
Few people could have predicted the downward spiral for Alibaba, when founder Jack Ma delivered a blunt criticism of China's financial system last October.
Bloomberg
Intel's plans for a multibillion-dollar investment in a new US semiconductor plant hang in part on Congress moving on a stalled plan to bolster the domestic chip industry, the company's chief executive said.
Bloomberg
BOE, CSOT and Samsung Display were all developing the OLED panel that Samsung Electronics plans to use on its Galaxy A73 smartphone launching next year, TheElec has learned.
TheElec
Micron Technology said on Wednesday it is considering building a new memory factory in the United States but that state and federal subsidies will be needed to offset costs that are higher than its factories in Asia.
Reuters
Micron Technology is planning to build a DRAM plant in Hiroshima prefecture, western Japan, for as much as JPY800 billion (US$6.98 billion), the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper reported Wednesday, without attribution.
Bloomberg
For around a year now, Apple has been switching to its own M-family processors across the Mac range - starting with the M1-equipped Mac mini, MacBook Air and entry-level MacBook Pro in November 2020, and culminating most recently in the high-end MacBook Pros with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips announced last night. In the process the company has abandoned Intel's processors after 15 years of collaboration.
MacWorld
Chipmaker GlobalFoundries and major shareholder Mubadala Investment Co. plan to raise as much as $2.6 billion in a US initial public offering.
Bloomberg
JP Morgan on Tuesday became the second brokerage in two weeks to cut its forecast for Apple's iPhone sales for the crucial holiday quarter as the global chip shortage and factory closures in Asia finally catch up to the technology giant.
Reuters
Apple is likely to slash its projected iPhone 13 production targets for 2021 by as many as 10 million units as prolonged chip shortages hit its flagship product, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Bloomberg
Samsung Electronics is likely to turn in its best quarterly profit in three years and a record revenue, on rising memory chip prices and brisk sales of its new foldable smartphones, analysts' estimates show.
Reuters
In an exclusive interview with Time magazine, TSMC chairman Mark Liu said his team has to triangulate different data points to decipher which customers were truly in need and which were stockpiling.
Time
GlobalFoundries plans to seek an initial public offering, according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
MarketWatch
The semiconductor chip shortage that is hamstringing the production of products ranging from cars and computers to appliances and toothbrushes will extend into 2022 and potentially beyond that, the CEO of semiconductor company Marvell Technology said.
CNBC
New car sales plunged over the last three months in the United States despite strong demand, as the shortage of computer chips and other supply chain issues caused shutdowns at auto factories and choked off the supply of vehicles.
CNN
The Biden administration is pressuring companies involved in the semiconductor supply chain to be more transparent as the global chips shortage continues to wreak havoc across many industries, officials said.
Bloomberg
ASML increased its financial forecasts on Wednesday and said it would have revenue growth of around 11% annually through 2030 amid booming demand for its products.
Reuters
Renesas Electronics on Wednesday unveiled plans to raise its capacity to supply a key component in cars and electronics more than 50% by 2023, as some industry watchers predict a global chip shortage could last into next year and beyond.
Nikkei Electronics Asia
Micron Technology forecast current-quarter revenue below analysts' expectations and warned that shipments for its memory chips were set to dip in the near term as its customers making personal computers face shortages of other parts.
Reuters
Power rationing and forced cuts to factory production in China are widening amid electricity supply issues and a push to enforce environmental regulations.
Bloomberg
Having said that, the rise of RISC-V cannot be ignored. Introduced in 2010, RISC-V ISA has become more reliable and promising with a series of new tape-outs from members and incremental ecosystem support.
Counterpoint
Texas Instruments (TI) has announced its gallium nitride (GaN) technology and C2000 real-time microcontrollers (MCUs) are being combined with Delta Electronics' high-efficiency power electronics expertise in the design of an enterprise server power-supply unit (PSU) for datacenter applications.
Company release
Merck plans to invest more than EUR3 billion (US$3.5 billion) through 2025 in its electronics business to capitalize on rising demand for semiconductor and display panel materials.
Bloomberg
Chinese auto-chip startup Black Sesame Technologies said on Wednesday that it had raised "hundreds of millions of dollars" from Xiaomi and other investors as China accelerates development of its semiconductor industry.
Reuters
US automaker General Motors will source more semiconductors directly from manufacturers to adapt to the ongoing global chip shortage, its CEO Mary Barra said on Friday.
Verdict
Infineon Technologies has opened its high-tech chip factory for power electronics on 300-millimeter thin wafers at its Villach site in Austria. At EUR1.6 billion (US$1.88 billion), the investment made by the semiconductor group represents one of the largest such projects in the microelectronics sector in Europe.
Company release
The project to link India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Singapore's PayNow is targeted for operationalization by July 2022, both nation's central banks said on Tuesday. Users on either of the systems will be able to make transactions to one another without having to sign up to the second platform, the banks added.
Tech Crunch
Infineon Technologies and Robert Bosch were forced to halt key chip factories in Germany after a power failure, potentially exacerbating a global semiconductor supply crunch.
Bloomberg
The EU must offer at least EUR20 billion (US$23.51 billion) in subsidies if it wants to "move the needle" on computer chipmaking in the bloc, according to the head of Soitec.
The Financial Times
Battery plants in South Korea and Michigan operated by LG Energy Solution (LGES) have been identified by GM as the source of defects behind a rash of battery-related fires in the Bolt that have triggered three recalls and $1.8 billion in warranty set-asides by GM since last November - recalls for which GM still has not implemented a hardware fix.
Reuters
New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation on Wednesday that effectively bans the sale of new internal combustion engine cars, off-road vehicles, light-duty trucks and equipment by 2035.
CNBC
Xiaomi has announced a pair of smart glasses called Xiaomi Smart Glasses. A company spokesperson tells The Verge that there's no plan to actually put them on sale, but Xiaomi has provided enough detail to make the concept product seem somewhat plausible - at least for some point in the future.
The Verge
South Korea's antitrust regulator has fined Alphabet's Google KRW207 billion (US$176.64 million) for blocking customised versions of its Android operating system (OS), in the US technology giant's second setback in the country in less than a month.
Reuters
Gogoro, a Taiwanese startup that specializes in battery-swapping technology, is in talks to go public through a merger with Poema Global Holdings, a blank-check firm, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Bloomberg
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