The fine is the largest in China's corporate history and will require the firm to lower royalty rates on patents used in China's mobile phone market.

The faster time to market for Samsung's 14nm process as well as potentially slightly bigger performance or power consumption benefits on TSMC's 16nm process must have convinced Apple that it's worth going back to Samsung.

Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore commented on the rumor that BLX IC Design is interested in acquiring Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and outlined some obstacles that may face a potential suitor for the company.

Samsung has announced the first full-year revenue decline at its mobile division since 2006 - a 21% fall - analysts barely mentioned that business. They focused instead on the semiconductor arm.

Qualcomm reduced its outlook for fiscal 2015, saying it expects its newest Snapdragon mobile chip will not be used in a major customer's flagship smartphone, sending its shares lower.

Qualcomm is a great American technology company. But it has two weaknesses. First, its growth depends too much on two business segments - CDMA technologies and technology licensing. Second, it relies too much on the Chinese market to monetize these technologies.

Korean businesses invested US$3.97 billion in China, up almost 30 percent compared to 2013 and the most since 2006, according to the Korea International Trade Association on Sunday.

SanDisk has reported a plunge in profit for the fourth quarter, as the flash memory card maker's bottom line was weighed down by lower margins, higher operating expenses and supply constraints.

For IBM, converting to the cloud is taking a toll. Even though it's necessary to drive future growth, the company has to sacrifice profits for now.

Regarding the occupational disease controversy over workers at its semiconductor plants, Samsung Electronics has announced that it will extend its scope of compensation to include its workers who developed any blood-related cancers, including leukemia, and all former workers who left the company a decade ago.

We note some investor speculation that Marvell Technology Group's mobile and wireless business is for sale, though we have no particular insight and Marvell does not comment.

Among big changes in the works are China Mobile's shift in procurement policy from five-mode smartphones to three-mode models, and big plans among Chinese apps processor vendors to embrace connectivity (WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy).

Shares of chip equipment makers Applied Materials, KLA-Tencor, and Lam Research are all up in after-market trading, following a Q4 report from Intel in which it projected capital spending to be flat this year with last year's level.

Lee Don-tae, former co-president of UK design consulting firm Tangerine, founded by Apple's Jony Ive, has been hired by Samsung Electronics as its new head of global design.

The newly unveiled LG G Flex 2 isn't just a smartphone for display buffs, the handset is also packing Qualcomm's latest and greatest 64-bit Snapdragon 810 processor. However, all may not be well with Qualcomm's latest high-end SoC, as more rumors have surfaced suggesting that the chip is struggling with some performance impacting production issues.

SanDisk has warned of lower-than-expected results for its fourth quarter, spurring fears that a smartphone-driven surge in the memory chip market could be slowing.

Among the top winners of US patents in 2014, Google cracked the top 10 for the first time, hitting No. 8 with 2,566 patents, up a whopping 38.6% from last year. Archrival Apple won 2,003 patents, up 12.8% to 11th place, just 92 patents behind Panasonic, which fell for the second consecutive year.

Canon and other Japanese electronics companies want to bring production of some goods back home, reversing a years-old trend of overseas manufacturing as a rapid decline in the value of the yen makes local goods more competitive.

Global Unichip and Credo Semiconductor have announced they are collaborating to enable the development of high-performance networking solutions that will be manufactured using TSMC's 16-nm FinFET+ process technology.

Globalfoundries and industry analyst Jim McGregor say production of a faster, smaller chip known as the 14-nanometer is on schedule at its Fab 8 factory in Malta, New York.

Globalfoundries is keen to expand its presence in China's lucrative semiconductor market and hoping its recent buyout of IBM's chipmaking business will help lead the way.

Toshiba will decide during the next business year from April on where to build an additional memory chip plant and will consider overseas locations for the facility, according to company CEO Hisao Tanaka.

Avnet Technology Solutions has landed the contract to supply Lenovo's recently acquired x86 server products and related offerings across the UK and Europe.

Vishay Intertechnology has acquired all of the remaining outstanding shares of Taiwan based Capella Microsystems for approximately NT$668.2 million or US$21.0 million.

San Diego-based chipmaker Qualcomm is laying off more than 100 workers in San Jose and Santa Clara, according to a recent state filing.

The settlement of China's anti-trust probe into Qualcomm is likely to intensify global scrutiny of the firm's highly profitable patent licensing business, and may even call into question its worldwide contracts with smartphone makers such as Apple and Samsung.

Samsung Electronics plans to invest KRW13.5 trillion (US$12 billion) in semiconductor facilities next year, up from the KRW13 trillion spent in 2014.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's anti-monopoly regulator which launched a probe of Qualcomm 13 months ago, said the case would be settled lawfully.

The companies have successfully completed inter-company interoperability testing of LTE Category 9 connectivity with 3-carrier downlink aggregation and download speeds of up to 410 Mbps.

China wants Qualcomm to accept lower royalty payments for technology used by domestic smartphone manufacturers, people familiar with the matter said, in a proposal that would hurt the chipmaker's main source of profit.

Xilinx has announced that its Kintex UltraScale KU040 FPGAs are now the industry's first 20nm device to move into volume production.

STATS ChipPAC and Chinese firm Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology (JCET) have extended talks on a proposed takeover for a second time.

Chinese companies spent almost US$5 billion in five major chip-related takeovers in the past 18 months, data compiled by Bloomberg show, with most deals getting state funding.

China is aiming to purge most foreign technology from banks, the military, state-owned enterprises and key government agencies by 2020, stepping up efforts to shift to Chinese suppliers, according to people familiar with the effort.

Qualcomm and its subsidiaries have committed to invest an aggregate of US$40M into four Chinese companies and the China Walden Venture Investments, L.P. fund, which is primarily focused on investing in semiconductor or semiconductor-related companies with business in China.

Imagination Technologies wants investors to think creatively about the future of the company, after the UK-based microchip designer reported declining revenues and slipped into a loss in its half-year results.

China's factory activity is in contraction, based on a private survey, reinforcing calls for more stimulus.

An India court partially lifted a sales ban on Xiaomi, saying the world's third-largest smartphone vendor could import devices as long as they use chips from Qualcomm.

A story that Apple tried for three weeks to suppress is now part of the public record.

Qualcomm is vulnerable in China, and the company knows it.