But don't expect to hitch a ride in the machine for several years.

Japan's NEC said on Thursday it will spend around 136 billion yen ($1.23 billion) to purchase KMD, which is Denmark's largest IT company.

NEC will offer early retirement packages for 3,000 of the 80,000 people employed in Japan by group companies next fiscal year, as it turns to restructuring yet again to help revive stagnant earnings in a fiercely competitive market.

Japan's NEC will sell most of its interest in a personal computer joint venture with Lenovo Group to the Chinese partner for about JPY20 billion (US$195 million), using the proceeds for growth investment.

Three of Japan's biggest electronics companies reported modest earnings gains Thursday for the first half of the financial year ending March, helped by the yen's weakness and restructuring, but held back by a soft domestic economy.

Fujitsu, NTT Docomo and NEC will dissolve by March a joint venture for developing core chips for smartphones. The venture, Access Network Technology, was formed in August 2012 to develop baseband chips.

Hewlett Packard and Japan's NEC will expand their existing partnership to develop high-end x86-based servers for cloud and Web applications.

NEC will now focus on conventional handsets and plans to sell some of its mobile phone-related patents, according to the Japanese daily.

NEC will cut about 400 of the less than 900 workers at its mobile phone handset unit to reduce fixed costs at the loss-making business, the Nikkei reported Thursday.

Japan's NEC will not provide a fresh capital injection to support loss-making chipmaker Renesas Electronics, a senior NEC executive said in a newspaper interview.

Renesas announced semiconductor sales revenues of $9.8bn for the year to the end of March 2012. Back in 2003, the first full year of Renesas' operations after the company was formed by merging the semiconductor operations of Hitachi and Mitsubishi, the company had revenues of $9bn and was the world's No.2 semiconductor supplier.

China's second- and third-largest contract chipmakers Shanghai Hua Hong NEC and Grace Semiconductor have agreed to merge in a sector in need of a consolidation and technology upgrades, sources said on Thursday.

NEC India is targeting growth of 40 percent in the projector market in the current fiscal.

NEC has unveiled a new LED projector that is aimed at being as portable as possible for the mobile pros that need a projector on the go. The projector is called the NP-L50W and it is LED illuminated for a long life and cool operation.

The Commission has adopted a decision settling a cartel investigation and imposing a fine totalling about 331 million euros (US$409 million) on Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Elpida and Nanya.

Corning has announced that its Gorilla glass was selected as the protective cover glass for the docomo Prime series N-02B by NEC. NEC, a mobile phone leader in the Japanese market, is offering this touch phone with a 3.2-inch display.

The net loss in the 12 months ending March 31, 2010 will probably be 55 billion yen (US$607 million), wider than the 9 billion yen projected earlier, according to NEC Electronics on October 28.

A new super central processing unit (CPU), jointly developed by Japan's big chipmakers and funded by the Tokyo government, is coming up to challenge Intel.

NEC is considering raising funds to strengthen its capital base, which has suffered during the economic downturn, according to sources familiar with matter.