Matsushita Electric Industrial has informally decided to build a lithium-ion battery plant in Suminoe Ward, Osaka, that will be the largest such plant in the world, it has been learned. The plant will be built at a cost of more than 100 billion yen on a site near Osaka Bay that was formerly occupied by a thermal power station of the Kansai Electric Power. Matsushita Battery Industrial, a Matsushita Electric subsidiary, will commence production at the plant in fiscal 2010 at the earliest, according to sources.

AMD has announced that its board of directors elected president and COO Dirk Meyer as the company's CEO. Meyer succeeds Hector Ruiz, who will become executive chairman of AMD and chair of the board of directors.

Numbers concerning counterfeiting vary from source to source, as do the suggested ways to defend the electronics supply chain against these fake components. In late 2007, the US Patent and Trademark Office estimated that counterfeiting and piracy drain about US$250 billion out of the US economy each year along with some 750,000 jobs...

...In tests with TI the CC2591 has boosted outdoor range for a Zigbee radio as much as ten-fold to 1.5 miles. The chip integrates a group of mainly passive components including a power amplifier, low-noise amplifier, balun, switches, inductors and RF-matching devices.

Semiconductor-based lighting could cut the energy used by lighting in half, says the U.S. Department of Energy. Because lighting accounts for about one-fifth of all electricity used in the United States, that could add up to some US$98B in energy savings by 2020. DOE figures just replacing the country's 60W bulbs with 10W LEDs would save enough electricity to power all of Las Vegas for a year – twice. Indeed, the government is so keen on the idea it is offering up to US$20M in prize money to developers of viable commercial fixtures.

Sony surprised some at the annual E3 conference on Tuesday by reducing the price of its high end PlayStation 3 (PS3) console, following Microsoft earlier move to reduce the price of its Xbox 360.

...Initial products at launch in Baltimore were confirmed to include embedded WiMAX laptops using Intel chipsets, the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition, a Samsung PC Card, a ZTE USB dongle and a ZyXEL CPE modem. Other vendors and products are expected to be approved by Sprint for use on the network and enter commercial availability in the future...

here is trouble in Nvidialand. AMD's new graphics cards apparently have surprised Nvidia, forcing the company to cut the prices of its new cards. Nvidia is adjusting its marketing strategy to GeForce 8800 cards to avoid what has all the signs for a big sales decline on the high end. Of course, that means that it is a good time for graphics cards shoppers.

vote on July 11 to confirm a proposal from the HomePlug Alliance and the Panasonic-led HD-PLC group for a powerline home networking standard failed to get the required number of backers. The two players have one more chance to get their proposal approved by the IEEE P1901 group in a vote that may come up at a meeting in Madrid in late September.

Trai has also accused the Department of Telecom (DoT) of keeping it in the dark, both on the availability of WiMAX spectrum as well as on the government’s efforts to get other users such as the department of space to vacate these radio frequencies.The regulator has also demanded that the government put in place a transparent and efficient spectrum management regime.

Shares of AMD fell to their lowest level in nearly 16 yearsafter the company disclosed that it will take US$948 million in charges against earnings when it reports its second-quarter financial performance next week...The size of the writedown was a surprise to investors, who sent the share price down 2.4% to close at US$4.84 a share, the lowest price since August 1992.

For its networks in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, the first three markets for its WiMax service, Sprint will use equipment from DragonWave, an Ottawa company that makes wireless Ethernet nodes that can be arranged in a mesh.