Costing just US$25, the Raspberry Pi has astonished its British creators by selling almost 1.5 million units in 18 months. More have been sold to children than expected, but even more to adults. They're using it like Lego to connect things up.

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.

In an average day, more than 60% of all Web-enabled devices exchange traffic with the tech giant's servers. That means Google is now bigger than Facebook, Netflix, and Twitter combined.

Aptina has announced a new 13-megapixel sensor for smartphones, the AR1331CP.

Wolfson's WM5102 HD audio hub has been adopted by Sharp for its new range of AQUOS smartphone and tablet devices.

"Effective immediately, in addition to his current duties in supporting me with global corporate strategy, [President of Global Sales] Jason Mackenzie will lead HTC America," company CEO Peter Chou told employees in an internal email Sunday. "[President of North America] Mike Woodward will lead Emerging Devices, a newly established business unit that will focus on innovative new HTC products and global distribution strategies."

Advanced Micro Devices hopes for financial stability after years of struggles, but analysts said that a volatile PC market could derail the chip designer's progress.

The deal would be a boost for Samsung, which is increasingly seeking to cater to the needs of government agencies, a niche long dominated by Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry.

Nokia sold 7.4 million Lumia smartphones in the second quarter, its best yet for sales of the Windows Phone devices, but still made a net loss.

BYD has recently rolled out the new HTC One for HTC, the Ascend P6 for Huawei, the Lumia 1020 for Nokia and the Galaxy S4 mini for Samsung, media reports said.

NEC will now focus on conventional handsets and plans to sell some of its mobile phone-related patents, according to the Japanese daily.