Samsung Electronics, maker of the Galaxy mobile phone, may have surpassed Nokia and Apple in smartphone sales for the first time on demand for devices that run on Android software, a research company said.

Horace Luke has resigned as HTC's chief innovation officer.

Research in Motion is to slash its workforce by over 10% as it kicks off a company-wide cost-cutting drive.

Smartphone manufacturer HTC is considering switching to Samsung's mobile application processors, industry sources said. HTC currently uses Qualcomm processors.

"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."

As of the end of June 2011, it had US$76 billion in cash and investments. No tech company has more.

Sales of PCs with Windows to businesses actually rose 8% in the quarter ended June 30, but could not offset weak demand among consumers, particularly in so-called developed markets, according to Microsoft. Sales of lightweight netbook computers with Windows fell 41% in the period.

Support for the latest UEFI specifications also means that American Megatrends' (AMI) Aptio core 4.6.5.1 is fully ready to support Microsoft Windows 8 and the key security and pre-boot optimizations anticipated in the next-generation version of the OS.

Lenovo outpaced Acer to become the number 3 vendor worldwide, according to IDC. Acer's shipments continued to decline from a year ago, but at a slower pace than in the first quarter as the company was affected by a review of inventory handling, as well uncertainties from its recent management shake-up.

Acer dropped from No. 2 to the No. 4 position in the worldwide PC market in the second quarter of 2011, according to Gartner. It had a great deal of inventory in the distribution channel in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. Acer's problems stemmed from its low-price, high-volume business model, which is no longer effective.

TSMC has begun trial manufacturing of next generation chips for Apple's mobile devices, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

Apple originally asserted 10 of its patents against HTC in March 2010, and the judge ruled today that HTC infringed on two patents, according to an HTC statement.

Sony Ericsson has blamed the the Japanese earthquake for a EUR50 million (US$71 million) loss during the three months to June.

Google's Facebook competitor Google+ grew to 10 million users in just two weeks, the company announced Thursday.

Rama Skukla, VP of Intel's architecture group, said during his keynote address to the SEMICON West conference in San Francisco that tablets are disappearing, and that the kind of devices we will be using a decade from now "could not be described." Intel is gearing up for this change, and the next five years will see major advances in processor technology, he added.

"What foundries are seeing more and more, and what we're seeing overall, is a very tight linkage to consumer demand. All of us are disappointed with demand for PCs this year, and tablets probably will be 20 million units short of what people thought was possible for the year..."

The news comes just weeks after Apple and Samsung accused each other of copying designs and technology.

Cisco Systems, the largest networking-equipment company, may cut as many as 10,000 jobs, or about 14% of its workforce, to revive profit growth, according to two people familiar with the plans.

South Korean consumer electronics giant LG Electronics has slashed its forecast for 2011 smartphone sales as the company struggles to compete against aggressive giants like HTC, Samsung and Apple.

Mosaid Technologies has announced that it is suing HTC America and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications (USA) for infringing three US patents that are essential to all cellular telephones that implement the emergency 911 (E-911) standard, as mandated by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Up to a million ARM processors are to be linked together to create a massive computer, called SpiNNaker (Spiking Neural Network architecture) that can simulate the workings of the brain.