Infineon Technologies may scale back its investment plans amid a slowdown in the chip sector and as demand falls due to the uncertain economic climate, according to CEO Peter Bauer.

Synaptics Inc expects to return to revenue growth as the maker of touchpads for PCs shifts focus to touchscreen chips used in tablets and smartphones, its newly appointed CEO said.

The big announcement came this morning when Amazon founder and CEO announced not only the new design for their Kindle e-reader but the new touchscreen version, Kindle Fire, to go head to head with Apple's iPad.

That's the day Apple is currently expected to hold its next big media event, according to sources close to the situation, where the tech giant will unveil the next iteration of its popular iPhone.

"It's not about how many cores or how many gigabytes, it's how well you can optimise the system," said Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs... Was that a crack at Google's Android OS?

Tim Cook is definitely not Steve Jobs, at least when it comes to charity. It might feel like a small change, but make no mistake: this is Cook starting to leave his mark as CEO and he's moving in a direction that no one expected from Jobs.

"They've got to sell the company, break it up, do something..."

Applied Materials CEO Mike Splinter told analysts on a conference call that he is now expecting chipmakers to spend US$1 billion less on new equipment than the company forecast in July. "We've seen demand from our foundry customers soften significantly in the past six weeks," Splitner said.

"Semiconductor companies now need to become much more systems-oriented," Freescale CEO Rich Beyer said during a technology forum. "We are into an era of connected intelligence where data is ubiquitous, and these devices [such as tablets] will conform to us and not have us conform to them, as in the case of the personal computer."

The pressure in the DRAM business today is "untenable for a number of players," with something needing to happen to the struggling Asian memory makers within the next couple of quarters, Micron CEO Steve Appleton was quoted as saying.

While global semiconductor revenue is projected to expand by 7.2% in 2011, Walden Rhines, chairman and CEO of EDA vendor Mentor Graphics, sounds a note of caution about maintaining this growth in 2012.

"We are seeing significant near term declines in wafer fab equipment spending, and as result our September quarter shipments, revenues and earnings per share will be well below our June quarter results," Lam Research CEO Steve Newberry said.

STMicroelectronics fell the most in a decade in Paris trading after CEO Carlo Bozotti said there will be a "correction" in sales and gross margin in the third quarter because of difficulties at customer Nokia.

Samsung Electronics CEO Choi Gee-sung said on July 26 that the firm has no plans to revise down its capex for the second half and that its bread-and-butter memory chip business would get additional investment this year.

"Skyworks exceeded all key metrics last quarter and we see a steep growth trajectory heading into the second half of calendar 2011," said David J. Aldrich, president and CEO of Skyworks.

"While our Q2 results were clearly disappointing, we are executing well on the initiatives that are most important to our longer term competitiveness," CEO Stephen Elop said. "Some progress is already evident, and thus we are targeting to end this year with more net cash and liquid assets than at the end of Q2 2011."

David Wang has resigned as CEO of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), according to the China-based foundry, which named Wenyi Zhang chairman of the board of directors and acting CEO.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) has announced that its chairman died. But shareholders rejected CEO David Wang's reappointment as a board director, and the company requested its shares be suspended from trading in Hong Kong pending the release of "price- sensitive" information.

The speculation comes a week after Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop described as "baseless" a blog report that Microsoft wanted to buy the Finnish company, which has been rocked by a recent profit warning and downgrades from ratings agencies.

Infineon Technologies is on track for accelerated growth and is well-equipped to make acquisitions, Chief Executive Peter Bauer said at an investor event on June 7.

Rampant piracy means Microsoft's revenues in China this year will only be about 5% of what it gets in the US, even though personal-computer sales in the two countries are almost equal, CEO Steve Ballmer told employees in a meeting.

Kim Jong-kap, the former head of Hynix Semiconductor, has been named as new CEO and chairman of Siemens' Korean affiliate.

Accelerometers and gyroscopes didn't attract much consumer notice until they found their way into smartphones. STMicroelectronics CEO Carlo Bozotti believes this business, known as MEMS, will soon generate 10% of the company's revenues.

CEO Paul Otellini called the MeeGo tie-in a mistake, and that the company would have been better-off choosing a different partner.

Cisco Systems is expected to cut thousands of jobs in possibly its worst-ever round of layoffs to meet CEO John Chambers' goal of slashing costs by US$1 billion, according to analysts.