Bryan Li, the company's CFO, says Yingli decided to become a World Cup sponsor because of the increasingly competitive market for solar companies. Yingli felt it could "not just compete with our global competition by cost. We also need to compete with them by the brand."

SoloPower claims that its modules boast a 10.5% to 11% efficiency (compared to ECD at somewhere in the 6.5 percent range) and the flexible units can be affixed to the roof with an adhesive or mounted on a lightweight non-penetrating rack.

NTP has filed a lawsuit against six of the world's leading cell phone makers, accusing them of infringing on its patents for delivering e-mail to handsets.

The rumored RIM tablet may have a 7-inch screen, a 1GHz processor and dual cameras.

Germany's upper house of parliament backed reductions in solar-power subsidies of as much as 16 percent after offering the industry an extra three months to adjust to the cuts.

The company has estimated revenues grew 23-25% on quarter in the second quarter of 2010, a positive increase over the guidance previously provided that revenues would be up 10-20% sequentially.

Several lawmakers were injured on July 7 as rival politicians clashed on the first day of a parliamentary debate on a controversial new trade pact with China.

Solar-power industry representatives said the bill passed by the lower house of parliament in Berlin today will increase pressure on companies such as Q-Cells SE and Solarworld AG as they face competition from producers in China.

Retroactively from July 1, subsidies for roof-mounted solar-electricity facilities will be cut by 13% instead of the originally planned 16% cut. Subsides to providers generating solar power on open-field sites--such as agricultural land--will be cut by 12% instead of 15%, while the initial cut for sites that have been converted from former military and industrial use would be 8% instead of 11%.

NTT DoCoMo is to launch an Apple-style application platform for its mass market "i-mode" mobile handsets, a move seen as a reaction by Japan's biggest mobile operator to the success of the iPhone.

Just5 phones boast big buttons. They can be turned up louder than the average celly. An emergency SOS button can be preset with five phone numbers (i.e. 911, doctor, relative, etc.). It can send and receive calls and text messages, and it has Bluetooth and an FM radio. And that's about it.

Smartphone use is gathering steam in the U.S., new research shows. 40% of American adults use their cell phones to surf the Web, e-mail, or use instant messaging, according to a study from Pew Research Center in Washington.

Agricultural Bank of China, a lender which boasts more customers than the entire US population, has raised US$19.2 billion from investors, according to several news reports. Shares of the company are expected to begin trading July 15 in Shanghai.

"However, global economic recovery that started in the second half of 2009 is in danger of slowing down due to macroeconomic problems such as the Euro crisis, continued high unemployment in the US...," said IDC analyst. "In such a scenario, the expected growth in the second half of 2010 may be pushed into early 2011."

British householders who have installed the expensive technology are unable to start generating electricity because of a shortage of "inverters".

Shanghai-based JA Solar announced that it had agreed to supply solar panels to MEMC Electronic Materials.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster should make us look to the sun, and start a revolution in how we meet our energy needs.

Shares of most DRAM makers have underperformed their respective benchmark indexes in Asia so far this year, as European sovereign-debt troubles surfaced and clouded views on global economic growth.