Fujitsu has outsourced production to TSMC and shut three production lines last year to help save 80 billion yen in the two years to March 2011.

Toshiba will spend 800 billion yen (US$8.9 billion) to build a new microchip plant, reviving plans that it had put on hold amid sluggish sales, according to the Nikkei business daily. It may start construction of the new factory for NAND flash memory chips as early as this summer, aiming to begin operations in spring 2011.

Toyota Motor aims to double its global output of gas-electric hybrid cars to one million units in 2011, as it fights to stay in the lead in the growing market for low-emission cars.

As China primes its energy market for explosive growth, the country could see one gigawatt of solar power generation capacity by 2011, said a new report by GTM Research.

By the end of 2011, ARM will be a "small but significant" PC processor architecture, said a Gartner analyst.