Essential is planning its international foray with launches in the UK, western Europe and Japan, although it has yet to launch its minimalist $699 handset in the US.

A source with knowledge of the planned downsizing told TechCrunch that the US firm would lay off "thousands" of staff across the world. The restructuring is set to include an organizational merger that involves its enterprise customer unit and one or more of its SME-focused divisions. The changes are set to be announced this coming week, we understand.

US coal producers welcomed President Trump's decision on Thursday to pull the US out of the Paris climate deal. But the move drew criticism from other business executives, who said it would hurt US companies' ability to work abroad and inhibit innovation.

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross sees the US semiconductor industry as still dominant globally but said he is worried that it will be threatened by China's planned investment binge to build up its own chipmaking industry.

Globalfoundries is offering early retirement packages to some longtime employees at its US semiconductor manufacturing plants, including East Fishkill, the company confirmed Wednesday.

Will there be a trade war? Probably not, because protectionist measures would hurt the US economy and the Chinese are counting on it to be impractical.

US-based private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners and US-based chipmaker Broadcom apparently tendered a roughly JPY2 trillion (US$17.9 billion) bid. That is on the high end of estimates of the memory business' value.

When translated from Mandarin, Apple's China retail website for the Red devices simply read as "now in red" while the Taiwanese site used the words "product" Red which the US and other countries have as well.

Seagate is closing a design center in South Korea, according to its 8-K homework submitted to US financial watchdog, the SEC.

The Japanese government said it was not considering steps to support embattled Toshiba and will share information with Washington on developments involving the firm and its US nuclear unit Westinghouse.

The technology sector in China is still not sophisticated enough to compete with the US in the global chip market, the chairman of China's top contract chipmaker said on Tuesday.

The Japanese government, fretting over the future of Toshiba's flagship memory chips unit, is prepared to block a sale to bidders it deems a risk to national security, sources said, a stance that gives US suitors a major advantage.

The South Korea tech giant's reputation among the general public in the US fell 42 positions after the Note 7 debacle, while Amazon maintained its top spot for the second straight year.

Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich met with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, where the company announced it will invest $7 billion in a factory employing up to 3,000 people.

"China will find it very tough to buy US high-tech companies and difficult to leverage Chinese joint ventures or wholly-owned enterprises to access key US intellectual property," Andrew Lu wrote in a Jan. 10 report for Smartkarma. "We thus expect more senior Taiwan veterans to join China's semiconductor industry as a second wave of talent moves to China."

Samsung Electronics may build a US plant for its home appliances business, a person familiar with the matter said, the latest global firm to consider a response to criticism about imports from new US President Donald Trump.

Google is expanding its "Android One" program for low-cost smartphones to the US in coming months, promising phone makers major new promotional dollars if they play by its rules, say three people briefed on the plan.

Ma said he would help US businesses create a million new jobs by using his website to sell to China.

The Obama administration is finalizing a study that could lead to restrictions on Chinese investment in the US semiconductor sector.

IBM is set to top the list of patent holders for the 24th year in a row in the US. This is no ordinary feat. IBM is the only company to have ever exceeded over 7,000 US patent grants during a single year.

Foxconn Technology, which manufactures Apple's iPhone and other products, said it is in talks to expand in the US. The statement comes amid President-elect Donald Trump's push for a return of manufacturing to the US.

US President-elect Donald Trump has spoken directly with the president of Taiwan - breaking with US policy set in 1979, when formal relations were cut.

US President Barack Obama appeared to block a Chinese company from buying Germany's Aixtron SE, marking only the third time in more than a quarter century that the White House has rejected an overseas buyer as a national security risk.

Samsung Electronics said it will disclose plans to boost shareholder value on Tuesday - a move that comes amid pressure from US fund Elliott Management to split the company in two and provide more in payouts.

Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, a buyout fund that agreed to acquire US-based chipmaker Lattice Semiconductor for $1.3 billion earlier this month, is funded partly by cash originating from China's central government and also has indirect links to its space program, Chinese corporate filings show.

Qualcomm US$39 billion deal to buy NXP Semiconductors helped push US announced deal volume this month to US$248.9 billion, according to data provider Dealogic.

As the scale of Trump's success became clear, Asian stocks fell sharply, the dollar weakened and gold prices rallied as investors raced for cover amid anxiety about his economic policies.

Massive government investment in China's semiconductor industry risks distorting the global market for integrated circuits, leading to damaging overcapacity and stifling innovation, US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker has warned.

Apple's granted patent 9,485,862 was filed in Q3 2014 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The all-American iPhone may remain somewhat of a fantasy for now, but at least a few more of its internal chips could end up being manufactured on home turf.

At an event in San Francisco, LeEco said it would begin selling smartphones and smart TVs in the US on Nov. 2. But Chief Executive Jia Yeuting said in an interview that only 100,000 phones would initially be available, and that he didn't know how many smart TVs will be available by the launch date.

"Meizu's refusal to negotiate a license agreement in good faith and its sales and distribution of infringing products around the world leave Qualcomm with no choice but to protect our patent rights through these additional legal proceedings," said Qualcomm.

A replacement model of the fire-prone Samsung Note 7 smartphone began smoking inside a US plane on Wednesday, the family that owns it said, prompting fresh investigations by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Aetna will give some customers and employees discounts on Apple's smartwatch, offering the potential that incentives from the insurance industry could boost sales of the technology giant's wearable device.

Google's two new smartphones, believed to be the Pixel and the Pixel XL, are reckoned to be the first to be released into the United States market using the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 flagship System-on-Chip.

After the unprecedented breach of hacking tools and exploits stolen from the US National Security Agency's elite hacking unit, some privacy advocates see it as clear vindication of Apple in its fight with the FBI earlier this year.