Much to the chagrin of the largest high-tech companies whose products have served as the foundation for computing for the past 30 years, the microprocessor is breaking free of the chains that bind it. ARM is a microprocessor manufacturer that is taking advantage of advancing technology's steady destruction of those chains forged by the likes of AMD, Intel, and Microsoft.

Satyam Computer Services began a bidding process Monday to sell a 51% stake in itself, and two potential buyers quickly confirmed that they would join the race for the scandal-tainted outsourcer.

Apple is planning to launch a netbook computer with a touchscreen as early as the second half of this year, two people close to the situation told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday. Apple is working with Taiwan's Wintek and Quanta Computer to assemble the new netbooks.

Japan's government is fortifying its defense of the corporate sector by broadening sources of public funding for companies struggling to cope with the deepening recession. Goldman Sachs analysts in a report Friday identified 15 Japanese technology companies on their financial risk watch list.

It seems that more and more power will consolidate into the hands of fewer and fewer players.

The European Commission said it no longer needed a full-time monitoring trustee to make sure Microsoft Corp. was obeying an EU order to share technical information with rivals that would help them make products compatible with Microsoft servers.

For a long time, Intel counted Advanced Micro Devices as its chief rival. These days, it's looking more like Intel and Qualcomm will be going mano-a-mano. While Intel says it retain full control of the process—essentially leaving TSMC as a contract manufacturer—the move clearly is aimed at stealing market share from British chip designer ARM, which licenses it products to Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Freescale and other companies.

With surprisingly little fanfare, iMacs and Mac minis have received an Nvidia 9400M makeover, while Mac Pros now take advantage of the latest high-performance Intel processors.

Ailing telecom equipment maker Nortel Networks, now operating in bankruptcy protection, said Monday its quarterly loss more than doubled as it booked over $2 billion in noncash writedowns and saw its sales plunge.

Microsoft may create up to 3,000 jobs as it raises investment in research and development by $1 billion this year amid a financial crisis that has also taken its toll on the software giant.

Deutsche Messe plans to shave a day off the CeBIT trade show next year, reducing it to a five-day event, show officials said Monday. The cut is part of the continuing evolution of CeBIT, which at its peak ran for more than a week. In recent years consumer electronics companies have left the show for the IFA show in Berlin, a once biennial event that went annual and is solely focused on consumer electronics.

Hangzhou Motorola Cellular Equipment, a joint venture between Motorola and Hangzhou Eastern Communications, will cease cell phone production by the first quarter of 2009, underlining the extended woes of the US communications giant's troubled mobile phone business. The mobile phone production line will switch to producing TV set-top boxes in the future, said Chen Lei, a spokersperson of Motorola China.