Whirlpool of the US has agreed on a US$552 million proposal to take control of a Chinese maker of fridges and washing machines as it tries to gain a better foothold in the fast-growing consumer markets of Asia.

Cisco Systems saw its shares fall sharply late Wednesday after the company announced that it is cutting 4,000 jobs to adjust to what CEO John Chambers called a "challenging" and "inconsistent" economy.

Intel, AMD and ARM are looking to address new workloads fueled by such trends as cloud computing, mobility, big data and social networks.

Universal Display sees more growth potential as more OLED products, including curved TVs, hit the market.

North Korea has begun producing its own smartphones, even though most residents' access to the Internet and telephone networks is severely limited.

The smartphone-fans turned out with BB guns and knives on sticks to pop the balloons and claim a voucher for a free LG G2.

The German economy grew strongly in the second quarter, raising hopes that the eurozone has come out of recession.

The commitment of solar panel manufacturers to good environmental practices may be fading as intense competition causes some companies to pare costs and others to go out of business, according to an industry watchdog.

Intel has confirmed that it acquired last month Fujitsu Semiconductor Wireless Products, the Tempe, Ariz.-based subsidiary of Fujitsu that developed an advanced multimode LTE RF transceiver. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Yingli Green Energy Australia has entered into a sales framework agreement with L&H Solar + Solutions, a subsidiary of L&H Group, the largest electrical wholesaler in Australia and New Zealand.

The cuts will not come from among the employees acquired along with Elpida, Micron said.

Foxconn Technology Group, best known for assembling Apple's iPhones, will decide by year-end whether to branch off into unconventional new territory: making solar panels in China.

"Windows remains committed to the ARM platform," a Microsoft spokesman told CNET. "We are looking forward to new ARM-based Windows devices that will launch later this year."

China's economy could be stabilising, the latest set of economic figures from the country has suggested.

Toshiba's new chief executive said he won't pull the plug on the company's unprofitable television and personal-computer operations, shunning the "easy option" of exiting cutthroat competition for a chance to reclaim its former prominence in the businesses.

A Taiwan government venture capital fund will sell more than 170 million shares in TSMC in 2014 to help fund Taiwan's budget, a source with direct knowledge of the sale said on Thursday.

Desktops, notebooks, tablets: Just five years ago, those three words defined three distinct classes of products. But now consumers are being asked to choose among all-in-ones, two-in-ones, convertibles, mini-tablets, ultraportables, and phablets. With Intel's new "Bay Trail" Atom chip, due this fall, you can expect the market to diversify even more.

When Amazon unveiled the unique display panel of its Paperwhite Kindle e-reader, it revealed two impressive facts: The first is that Amazon's internal hardware engineering team is more sophisticated than Amazon's line of decent but not so revolutionary tablets and e-readers would suggest.

The Tokyo-based company will build a 1-megawatt station in Fukushima prefecture and a 4-megawatt plant in Akita, both in northern Japan, it said in a statement today. No financial terms were disclosed.

A new type of solar cell, made from a material that is dramatically cheaper to obtain and use than silicon, could generate as much power as today's commodity solar cells.

NerdWallet have compiled the top 5 states in the US for residential solar energy, according to four specific criteria. Top of the pile was California, thanks to a sunny location, the pioneering of solar leasing, and great cash-back incentives. Filling out the top 5 were Hawaii, Arizona, Maryland, and Delaware.

The European Union decided against imposing preliminary anti-subsidy tariffs on Chinese solar panels, opting to wait another four months to assess whether the levies are warranted in the biggest EU trade fight of its kind.

Ben Kunz wanted to do "the green thing" and save on his electric bill without paying a lot of money up front. So instead of buying a solar system for his house in Cheshire, Connecticut, he leased one.

High-level executives of ChiMei Lighting Technology Corp. (憟？??？？) are reported to have quit en masse, leaving behind US$1.87 million in debt and worrying employees and a banking syndicate about what will come next.

A group of banks yesterday said LED chip manufacturer Chi Mei Lighting Technology Corp (憟？??？？) must repay up to NT$6 billion (US$200 million) in loans, but the company's major shareholders have responded that they do not have any obligation to cover the troubled firm's debts.