Facebook has filed for an initial public offering that could value the social network between US$75 billion and US$100 billion, putting the company on track for one of the biggest US stock-market debuts of all time.

Mobile phone chip maker Qualcomm said Wednesday that its fiscal first-quarter profit rose 16% as rising global demand for smartphones boosted sales.

The last of three patents that Rambus used to win infringement lawsuits against Nvidia, Hewlett-Packard and others has been declared invalid, according to legal documents.

Toshiba and Fujitsu booked deep losses during the October-December quarter, blaming a spike in component costs caused by Thai flooding and a tough market for consumer electronics. Both companies slashed their earnings targets for the current fiscal year through March, but said they are still on track to book an annual profit.

Intel has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with QLogic to acquire the product lines of and certain assets related to its InfiniBand business. A significant number of the employees associated with this business are expected to accept offers to join Intel.

Micron Technology and Virtensys have announced that the companies have signed an agreement for Micron to acquire the assets of privately held Virtensys, a provider of PCIe-sharing solutions based in Manchester, England and Beaverton, Ore.

Motorola Mobility, the phone maker Google has agreed to buy for US$12.5 billion, swung to an operating loss in the fourth quarter of 2011 due to increased competition in the smartphone market.

Facebook will begin the process of becoming a publicly-listed company this week, valuing the social networking site at between US$75 billion and US$100 billion, reports suggest.

Qualcomm has acquired display startup Pixtronix, which develops technology applicable to smartphone and tablet screens.

"We delivered a solid fourth quarter amid challenging market conditions," said company president and CEO John Kispert. "2011 was a year of transition and intense product development. Spansion is now well-positioned for growth in the future in areas such as automotive, industrial, communications and gaming..."

Nokia has posted an operating loss of US$1.25 billion in the fourth quarter as unexpectedly high Windows Phone sales and a US$250 million payment from Microsoft weren't enough to compensate for worse than anticipated declines in the company's legacy smartphone lines.

Windows 8 is stable on the ARM chip platform and will be seeded to developers soon, sources told CNET. Devices may be priced significantly less than their Intel counterparts, too.

Leading electronic equipment manufacturers remained the center of the semiconductor world in 2011, accounting for US$105.6 billion of semiconductors on a design total available market basis - 35% of semiconductor vendors' worldwide chip revenue, according to Gartner.

Samsung spokesman James Chung said that his company has not "considered acquiring" RIM and is "not interested" in buying the BlackBerry maker. He added that neither company approached the other to try to create an acquisition deal.

ARM hopes for a serious impact on the server market starting in 2014 when its 64-bit processor design reaches the market, CEO Warren East said.