A Chinese employee of South Korea's Samsung Electronics has been arrested for allegedly trying to leak confidential business information, a Seoul prosecutor said Wednesday. The confidential information included Samsung's key technologies on reducing noise of home appliances, details of products under development and sales plans for the next 10 years.

"US day-one sales numbers for Nintendo 3DS were the highest of any Nintendo hand-held system in our history," Nintendo said in a statement. The company promised more detailed stats on April 14, when NPD Group will release a report about the month's video game sales.

SanDisk expects tablet sales will increase from 17 million units in 2010 to nearly 205 million units by 2014. The firm also estimates the flash based storage per device (SSD storage) will more than triple during the same period from 31 Gb/unit in 2010 to 96 Gb/unit in 2014.

March quarter sales are expected to be flat to up 5% sequentially, consistent with the company's previous guidance. Xilinx said the guidance assumes that its shipments to customers in Japan are not affected by the recent events there.

Figures show US retail sales in February 2011 rose for the eighth month in a row and January's figures were higher than thought.

OCZ Technology Group, a provider of high-performance solid-state drives, has said that it expects to report record revenue of about US$64 million in its fiscal fourth quarter, nearly double the level of a year ago.

Qualcomm expects to see a decline in its operating margins for its chipset business in the coming year as smartphone growth drives more competitive pricing.

First Solar reported a 10% rise in fourth-quarter earnings, beating Wall Street estimates, but the company lowered the top end of its 2011 sales forecast and its shares fell 4.7% after hours.

Chip gear maker Veeco Instruments expects a longer sales cycle and forecast first-quarter results below analysts' estimates.

Rising demand for vehicles in China has boosted profits at Infineon. Back orders are expected to last through summer.

The profit gain was largely due to "a significantly improved performance in electronic devices, driven mainly by the return to profit of the LCD business and demand expansion in NAND flash memories," Toshiba said in a statement.

When a final agreement is reached, Powerchip will phase out the sales of own branded DRAMs and Elpida will purchase all PC DRAMs from Powerchip to sell them as its own branded products. Powerchip currently has 80,000 wafers per month capacity for commodity DRAM production.

The first full quarter on Elop's watch will include the first sizable sales from the company's N8 smartphone. The 44% drop in profit forecast by analysts stands in contrast to Apple's 78% earnings growth in the period.

In the roughly two weeks since Motorola's biggest customer Verizon Wireless unveiled plans to start selling an iPhone in February, Motorola has already noticed a decline in smartphone sales, Chief Executive Sanjay Jha said on Wednesday.

The mail order smartphone business didn't work out so well for Google with its Nexus One. But that doesn't mean the idea of carrier independence can't succeed with an established direct sales leader.

PV system integrator MHH Solartechnik has signed a multiyear contract to sell Solar Frontier's next generation CIS modules to its German customers. Solartechnik will begin selling the modules in March, with the total volume of sales expected to exceed 100MW.

The sales decline during the quarter was driven primarily by weaker than anticipated wireless communications sales to customers in Europe and North America.

ASML said it expects first-quarter net sales this year of about 1.4 billion euros (US$1.88 billion), and said the company has the potential for 2011 sales of more than five billion euros. Sales in 2010 rose to 4.51 billion euros.

Analysis was sparked by a Morgan Stanley survey suggesting that Nokia could have sold 2.5 million N8 smartphones during Q410, and 9 million in 2011. The survey included 150 handset retailers in 5 countries across Europe.

The revenue shortfall is primarily attributable to order push-outs and cancellations from TV customers in the seasonally weak fourth quarter as well as slower than expected program ramp-up and a weaker retail segment for the company's set-top box products.

Two of Britain's biggest retailers shrugged off the impact of this month's heavy snow by revealing strong Christmas trading.

Snowstorms have deterred shoppers at post-Christmas sales in America's northeast. However, some analysts expect the storms will boost online sales.

The decreased sales guidance is primarily related to weaker than anticipated sales to a few large communications customers, specifically in the wireless segment, according to the company.

"Chip prices remained strong until the first half of this year, but they dropped sharply, especially during the fourth quarter," CEO OC Kwon said in a recent interview. "Due to the sharper-than-expected fall, a considerable decline in both our sales and profit is inevitable in the fourth quarter."

IDC forecasts that worldwide semiconductor revenues will grow 9% on year in 2011, and will achieve a CAGR of 6% for the 2010-2015 forecast period. "Near term, the semiconductor market should hit bottom by the second quarter of next year and begin a growth cycle that will take us into the second half of 2012..."

Texas Instruments has narrowed its fourth-quarter financial forecasts that match analysts' projection, citing higher demand for communications equipment.

Following the acquisition of Numonyx earlier this year, Micron Technology has reorganized its memory operations. The company has also recruited Tom Eby, a former executive vice president and chief marketing and sales officer at NOR rival Spansion.

More Americans went shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend than in recent memory, and online shopping accounted for the highest percentage of the weekend's sales yet.

Verigy has reported a profit for the August-October period, as higher sales of semiconductor test systems helped it come back from a loss a year earlier. The company's guidance fell short of Wall Street's expectations, however.

Apple is not only poaching corporate customers from RIM, it's poaching members of RIM's enterprise sales team.

Warren East, chief executive of ARM, said the market for tablet PCs could grow to as much as 60m unit sales in 2011 as he brushed aside concerns that Intel would pose a major competitive threat to the UK chip company in the fast-growing market.