Sony has announced a major reorganization and a new management team. The changes, effective April 1, 2009, will fundamentally reorganize the company's electronics and game businesses to improve profitability and strengthen competitiveness in the midst of the continued global economic crisis.

The new management of The Foundry Company, which includes former AMD CEO Hector Ruiz, is expected to announce the official name of the company soon. When AMD does split in two, Meyer said he will not have any management role in the new company. However, AMD does stand to be The Foundry Company's largest customer, which will continue to tie the two companies together. Meyer also suggested that AMD might switch some of its ATI graphics chip production to The Foundry Company as well.

On Monday morning, there will be a chip industry summit of sorts: the world's largest chipmaker and the world's largest chip foundry will make a strategic announcement at Intel headquarters in Santa Clara. Whatever the deal is, it's probably something TSMC needs more desperately than Intel does. With its smaller chip customers swooning, one has to imagine Tsai might cut Intel a pretty sweet deal to get any business the chip giant would like to send his way.

As co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel — as well as Intel's former chief executive and chairman — Gordon Moore has monitored the evolution of the computer-chip industry for more than half a century. "I don't have any crystal ball on that. Its seems like it's still going down. It's probably going to be 2010, more or less. I don't think we're falling off the edge of the Earth. But it's been a terrible shock to the whole system".

Intel and TSMC have scheduled a joint press conference on Monday (March 2), an unusual step for Intel, which has rarely outsourced any manufacturing to a third party. The event will be hosted by Intel execs Anand Chandrasekher, general manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group and Sean Maloney, the company's chief marketing officer. Both will be joined by TSMC execs Rick Tsai, TSMC's president and chief executive, and Jason Chen, TSMC's vice president of worldwide sales and marketing.

If you want to feel good about the economy, do not read any of the trade publications. They're predicting a continued downward slide in every imaginable aspect of the industry except for MEMS. If you pick up anyone's iPhone nowadays you'll find perhaps 50 or more of these applications, all of which are essentially useless but kind of interesting in a very nerdy way.

In the six weeks since Carol Bartz took over as Yahoo chief executive, she's interviewed employees and executives, learned the company's businesses, assessed what's good, diagnosed what's wrong, and now reorganized Yahoo management to set it on a new course.

Japan's exports plunged 45.7% in January compared with a year ago to hit the lowest figure in 10 years, official figures have shown. Imports exceeded exports by 952.6 billion yen (US$9.9 billion). It is the largest gap since records began in 1980. Demand for Japanese cars in particular dropped by 69%. Trade in electronics and other goods has also slumped as global economies and consumer spending contract, pushing Japan deeper into recession.

Google has added its voice to the case against Microsoft as the European Commission probes antitrust charges related to the software giant's Internet Explorer browser. In January, European regulators brought formal charges against Microsoft for abusing its dominant market position by bundling its Internet Explorer Web browser with its Windows operating system, which is used in 95% of the world's personal computers.

The Kindle 2 electronic reader that Amazon is now shipping has a new read-aloud feature. And for authors and publishers, that's a potentially troublesome development. "It's a contractual minefield," says Paul Aiken, executive director of The Authors Guild. "Authors often give audio rights to one entity and e-books rights to another."