Renesas Electronics will slash 5,400 jobs in Japan, or about one quarter of its domestic workforce, reports said Wednesday, as the struggling Japanese chipmaker overhauls its money-losing business.

Canon is shifting capacity back to Japan in an apparent vindication of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's yen-weakening policies, which have made it more profitable for some Japanese manufacturers to produce and export from home.

An explosion and fire at a Mitsubishi Materials chemical plant in central Japan on Thursday afternoon killed five people and injured at least 12 others, Yokkaichi police said.

Japan's Panasonic will sell three domestic semiconductor factories to Israel's TowerJazz as early as the current business year ending March, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, bringing the embattled electronics giant closer to completing the overhaul of its loss-making businesses.

The US, Japan, Australia and South Korea have all widely adopted 4G, but mobile phone users in many parts of the UK may have to wait until the end of 2015 for comprehensive coverage.

Japan's Renesas Electronics said Friday it will close a plant that makes system LSI chips for Nintendo's game consoles and other consumer electronics after failing to find a buyer for the facility in Tsuruoka in northern Japan.

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

A craze coming out of Japan is now catching on in Silicon Valley: stickers. In the last few months, Facebook and Google have added digital stickers, basically oversize emoticons, to their chat applications. Venture-backed startups such as MessageMe and Path are also chasing the sticker fad.

Panasonic will close a solar panel manufacturing plant in Hungary to consolidate production in Malaysia and Japan.

The plant may be built in Tomakomai city, Hokkaido, Miyuki Nakayama, a Sharp spokeswoman, said by phone today.

A weaker yen and solid domestic demand has brightened the mood at Japanese manufacturers, six months into Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's big effort to jolt the world's third-largest economy out of deflation.

In addition to filing for a trademark on the term "iWatch" in Russia and Japan on June 3, we have discovered that Apple filed for a trademark in Taiwan, which follows a report from 9to5Mac that Apple filed in Mexico as well, bringing the total number of trademark filings to four.

Japanese exports rose in May by the most since 2010 as the yen weakened, providing a boost to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan to revive the economy.

Japan's NHK network is scheduled to broadcast an animated documentary on TSMC at midnight Thursday, with TSMC's chairman and CEO, Morris Chang, depicted by the fictional character Shima Kosaku.

Japan is set to overtake Germany as the world's largest solar market by annual installations this year as government incentives to encourage clean energy in light of the Fukushima nuclear crisis attract investment.

Japan-based Sony has managed to slash the operating loss in its television business by half in the just-ended fiscal year by reducing fixed costs and narrowing its product lineup, a company executive said Thursday--a significant improvement even though the segment has lost money for a ninth year in a row, the Nikkei reported.

Mitsubishi Corporation (MC), Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) and Solar Ventures have acquired a solar project portfolio in Italy worth 42MW.

Korea, China and Japan will hold three days of talks starting on March 26 on forging a trilateral free trade agreement.

The Japan solar market has significantly changed since the introduction of feed-in-tariffs (FITs) last July. With domestic demand growing faster than expected, Japan's government has proposed a FIT reduction of around 10%.

After an earlier complaint against Nichia was rejected, Everlight has uncovered additional details to bolster its claim that fictitious results were included in a Nichia patent application.

Samsung has failed to secure a iPhone ban in Japan in its latest patent fight with Apple.

The yen resumed its slide on Monday as Group of 20 officials held off from censuring Japan for appearing to target a weaker currency as a way to spur growth.

As part of its broader restructuring measures, Fujitsu said it will cut 5,000 jobs, including 3,000 workers in Japan and 2,000 overseas, partly through early retirement offers. Fujitsu currently has about 170,000 workers world-wide.

Fujitsu and Panasonic are in the final stage of talks to go ahead with a merger of their large-scale integrated chip (LSI) operations into a new company, NHK reported Friday.

Japan has posted a record high trade deficit for 2012, as exports to Europe and China continued their plunge.

As well as its US regional headquarters, Sony has also indicated its willingness to sell the building housing its television business in Tokyo.

Japan's economy minister surprised financial markets on Tuesday by warning of the potential ill effects of a sharply weaker yen in a rare rhetorical departure from years of attempts by Tokyo to talk the currency down.

The dollar jumped to a two-year high against the yen Thursday on expectations that Japan's new government will lower interest rates to boost the economy, weakening the yen.

Japan's industrial output tumbled more than forecast to the lowest level since the aftermath of the record 2011 earthquake. In contrast, South Korea's industrial output exceeded estimates in November and the nation's current-account surplus rose to a record.

Shares rose early on Monday after the win by Shinzo Abe, who has promised more public spending and says he will implement measures directed at weakening the yen and fighting deflation.

There's nothing surprising about Japan going out of its way to bail out Renesas Electronics. The obvious objective is to maintain a steady flow of Renesas chips into domestic products, especially Toyota and Nissan automobiles.

Japan's prime minister dissolved the lower house of parliament Friday to avoid a disastrous freeze in government spending, triggering elections that could result in more aggressive policies to stimulate the country's economy.

A joint venture between Sumitomo and Kazakhstan's state-owned Kazatomprom uranium mining group officially opened a rare earth metal plant Friday in the former Soviet republic.

Toshiba is expected to report a 10% drop in consolidated operating profit for the April-September period as a strong yen hurt sales, the Nikkei reported.

The strong Japanese yen has hurt the country's export competitiveness, while demand has evaporated as growth slowed in most regions. Meanwhile, the country's energy imports have risen following closures of most of its nuclear plants.

Marubeni Corporation has announced its plans to build an 81.5 MW photovoltaic plant in Japan's Oita prefecture.