Solar power plants in deserts using mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays have the potential to generate up to a quarter of the world's electricity by 2050, a report by pro-solar groups said on Monday.

Japanese electronics giant Toshiba plans to reduce fixed costs 10% more than previously announced, a news report said on Sunday.

A scandal involving the chairman of parent Samsung did no harm to the reputation of Samsung Electronics, which won the title of South Korea's overall most-admired company in the Asia 200 survey.

Corsair has announced that the 6GB Dominator GT 2000MHz CAS 8 has passed Intel's XMP-Ready certification for Core i7 Extreme Edition processors, making it the fastest memory kit to gain Intel's stamp of approval.

SanDisk CEO Eli Harari said 2009 could turn out to be "significantly better" than anticipated at the start of the year as big cutbacks in flash memory production bring balance back to an industry stung by oversupply.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says that a new solar energy plant will stimulate Australia's economy and make the country a leader in renewable energy.

LDK Solar, a China-based maker of wafers for solar cells, has reported a loss of US$22.5 million, or 21 cents per American depositary share.

Axcelis Technologies, a supplier of ion implantation and cleaning systems, has announced a global workforce reduction of approximately 235, or 20% of its employees, since year end 2008.

Nanometrics has begun shipping its Lynx cluster metrology systems, as a follow-on order to a leading memory manufacturer as part of its plan for high-volume manufacturing of its latest DRAM and flash memory technologies.

Tessera Technologies has said that it won a patent dispute over small-format semiconductor packaging products, with the International Trade Commission issuing a cease-and-desist order against rivals Motorola, Qualcomm, Freescale Semiconductor and Spansion.

Japan's top chipmaker Toshiba has said it will end production of mobile phones in Japan due to plummeting demand amid an economic slump. The company said its only domestic plant for mobile phones will halt operations in October.

Europe's depleted semiconductor sector needs a strong leader to unite the continent's chipmakers around common goals if chip manufacturing in the region is to survive, the European head of industry association SEMI said.

The cost and performance benefits of flip-chip packaging, combined with the increased cost of gold bonding wire, have made flip-chip technology competitive for applications ranging from cell phones to gaming chips.

Globalfoundries has announced a joint development agreement with T-RAM, as part of which the two firms will bring T-RAM's Thyristor-RAM embedded memory technology to "advanced technology nodes."

Sony Electronics Asia Pacific has introduced three new entry-level cameras. The new cameras support the Memory Stick Duo slot for high-capacity Memory Stick PRO Duo and Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo media, and the additional SD (Secure Digital) slot that is also SDHC-compliant.

Samsung Electronics said it will press ahead with its research and development effort. The world's biggest producer of DRAM chips is to spend some US$2 billion on chips R&D for 2009.

A collection of top memory manufacturers formalized their commitment to developing a low-power DRAM for use in mobile devices on Monday. The backdrop, unfortunately, was a catastrophic drop in DRAM revenue, as measured by Gartner.

Semiconductor packaging/assembly/test companies are gently ratcheting up their manufacturing capacity, but it won't be enough to prevent a culling of the herd, with nearly 20 (mostly older) facilities likely to be shuttered within a span of two years, according to new analyses from Gartner.