Currently, Apple pays royalties for ARM's chip designs used in its products. If the company acquired ARM, it could conceivably raise licensing costs to rivals or even take ARM designs off the market.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp.'s battery- making venture with GS Yuasa Corp. is considering producing lithium-ion cells in Europe as demand in the region for electric cars grows.

Airports across Europe are gradually reopening, but travellers are still dealing with delays as airlines try to clear the massive flight backlog caused by a cloud of volcanic ash.

Altera has reported net profits of US$153.2 million for the irst quarter, compared with profits of US$44.0 million a year earlier. "We are benefiting from growth in our 65nm and 40nm FPGAs as customer designs transition from prototyping into production," said company CEO John Daane.

IM Flash Technologies has advertised dozens of jobs openings in the island city-state of Singapore for its 300mm fab. IM Flash Singapore is currently looking to fill 61 jobs, including engineering, procurement and recruiting positions which points that they are closer to ramp-up.

Pacific Crest Securities has downgraded SanDisk to underperform, saying the maker of memory chips may be headed for a period of flat market dynamics.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) has said it plans to book several charges to its 2009 results. It also raised its first-quarter revenue guidance, projecting a 4%-6% increase from fourth-quarter revenues of US$333.1 million.

Most believe TSMC will remain a foundry in the IC sector, but not in LEDs. There is little or no business model in the LED foundry sector. Most LED vendors have their own fabs and the startup costs are minor compared to the IC industry. The real value-added in LEDs is technology and the channels.

South Korea's leading mobile company, SK Telecom, said Monday that it is planning to expand into the Chinese mobile game market beginning in the second half of this year

Ultimately, only ramped up production will drive SSD prices down, and that is not expected to begin until 2011.

For some time, there has been shortages of DRAMs, causing prices to increase for both DDR2 and DDR3. Now, PC OEMs have reached the boiling point amid the price hikes.

DDR3 spot pricing has been stable for several weeks; however, with several contract price increases the gap between spot and direct is narrowing.