Brian Toohey has taken office as president of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), succeeding George Scalise who had led the association since 1997.

But publishers said it is still too early to gauge for the entire industry whether the growth of e-books is cannibalizing sales of paperback books, a huge and crucial market. Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, also countered the perception that sales of the company's Kindle e-reading device had suffered due to competition from other devices, such as Apple's iPad.

China has passed the U.S. to become the world's biggest energy consumer, according to new data from the International Energy Agency, a milestone that reflects both China's decades-long burst of economic growth and its rapidly expanding clout as an industrial giant.

The Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), South Korea's most powerful business lobby, has asked Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee to head the group. Lee was once convicted of tax evasion.

Applied Materials "has not made a dent in the mask shop," said Brian Trafas, chief marketing officer at KLA-Tencor. "They have a few systems in the fab, but it's a small share."

Analysts expect that it recovered to pre-recession levels in the just-ended quarter, as manufacturers ramp up production of electronics that use TI chips and build inventories.

HTC and Samsung Electronics on Monday cast the latest rebukes to the assertion by Apple that the iPhone 4's reception problems are shared by other global smartphone makers.

GSI Technology is growing fast by selling specialty memory chips, but the small company wants to grow to the next level.

Japan's Sanyo Electric is to sell its loss-making chip unit to ON Semiconductor for about 33 billion yen (US$373 million), turning its focus to environmentally friendly technology.

Germany's move comes as Italy plans a 30% cut in its FIT for next year. That could force Italian developers to build as fast as possible in the 2H10, much like German developers did in 1H. The lower drop in FIT gives manufacturers time to make a transition to markets such as the United States and Canada, which have the possibility of being larger than Europe, based on combined electricity demand and land available for development.

Windows Phone 7 architect Belfiore talks about the Microsoft vision for mobile phones, how some Kin leftovers might or might not make their way into the platform, and what Microsoft has learned from Apple's iPhone 4 and Android's rapid growth. He also addressed how Microsoft might help grow the Zune Marketplace app library so it can compete with the Apple App Store.

Sony Ericsson posted its second consecutive quarterly profit Friday as strong sales of newly launched mobile phones in the second quarter helped reverse heavy year-earlier losses.

Switching platforms is not as simple as just picking a new smartphone. Companies have entire infrastructures built around BlackBerry, and managing BlackBerry devices through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). The IT staff understands how to configure, troubleshoot, and support the BlackBerry environment. The users are comfortable with the BlackBerry culture. They are familiar with BlackBerry conventions and BlackBerry apps, and they understand how to navigate the BlackBerry interface to maximize efficiency and productivity.

The most important announcement from SEMICON West was a subtle statement from Globalfoundries about tools. Putting some bits together, it is pretty clear that the company is going to use EUV lithography at the 15nm node.

Apple engineers were aware of the risks associated with the new antenna design as early as a year ago, but Chief Executive Steve Jobs liked the design so much that Apple went ahead with its development, said another person familiar with the matter.

Hitachi's delay in supplying electronic controls to Nissan was caused by STMicroelectronics' failure to meet a microchip order.