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 European Parliament has ratified a free-trade pact between the EU and South Korea - clearing the way for the deal to come into effect from July.

Losing the deal to Google could have landed a fatal blow to Microsoft's chances in the mobile market.

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.

Like Ford Sync, it will allow you to use your smartphone, play music and other vehicle functions by voice command. It has a feature that displays and name of the musical artist and the song.

Deutsche B繹rse and NYSE Euronext have unveiled their plan to create what would be the largest stock and derivatives exchange, while a second proposed merger would bring together the London Stock Exchange and Canada's TMX Group.

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."

A study has found that managing your Facebook account leads to stress and anxiety, with many even saying the negative psychological effects outweigh the benefits of staying in touch through the site...Maybe you should hold off buying one of those Facebook phones after all.

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.

Japan and India have signed a free-trade agreement that will see tariffs on 94% of goods scrapped within a decade.

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.

RIM should be able to draw new customers as wireless operators shift their promotions and marketing support away from Nokia while it develops phones that use Microsoft's software, Jim Suva, a Citigroup analyst, wrote.

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.

"I don't envision us using Microsoft. I would never say never but it's not something we're entertaining now," said Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president of software and services product management for Motorola.

"We would've loved if they would have chosen Android; they chose the other guys," Schmidt said during a keynote presentation here at Mobile World Congress. "I think we were pretty straightforward. We would like them to adopt Android at some point in the future; that offer remains open."

Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith reiterated that the chip giant will be a strong player in the fast-growing mobile device market despite early struggles. Intel, which provides microprocessors that run about 80% of the world's computers, has been slow to gain traction in the smartphone and tablet markets. Products based on ARM Holdings PLC (ARMH) architecture have dominated the industry, with the chips seen as much more power efficient than Intel processors.