Germany's solar industry is to be subjected to four subsidy cuts over the next 12 months, according to the revised draft of the country's Renewable Energy Act [EEG]. The final two of these reductions had not been included in the original amendment to the bill and their addition is a major blow to the country's solar industry.

South Korea's Samsung SDI aims to increase total annual revenue to 13 trillion won ($12.1 billion) in 2015, more than double last year's 5.1 trillion won, the company said on Wednesday.

Professor Lee Jong-ho at the School of Electrical Engineering of Seoul National University has claimed that he is in possession of the patent on bulk FinFET and it is identical to Intel's tri-gate MOSFET.

GT Solar International Inc of Merrimack, NH, USA (a provider of polysilicon production technology as well as sapphire and silicon crystalline growth systems and materials for the solar, LED and other specialty markets) has reported revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter (ended 2 April) of $271.6m, up 3.3% on $262.9m last quarter and 40% on $194.7m a year ago. Revenue by business segment was $79.2m in polysilicon, $186m in photovoltaic (PV), and $6.4m in sapphire (all of which was sapphire materials revenue).

Factory output rose by 1% in April from the previous month as companies worked towards dealing with problems in supply chain disruption.

Fujitsu Semiconductor has announced the release of 113 microcontrollers, including chips from the MB96600 Series of 16-bit microcontrollers and chips from the MB91520 Series of 32-bit microcontrollers.

Kim Jong-kap, the former head of Hynix Semiconductor, has been named as new CEO and chairman of Siemens' Korean affiliate.

STMicroelectronics plans to significantly increase its MEMS production capacity to more than 3 million sensors a day by the end of 2011 to sustain exploding demand.

Sky Solar has named Amy Zhang, Suntech's former CFO, as its new CEO and executive director, succeeding founder and chairman Weili Su, who will focus on company's strategic development and promoting its advanced technologies.

The company announced plans to double production of USB 3.0 host controllers to six million units a month starting June to satisfy the rising demand.

The blog Patently-O claims that Apple received an "assignment of assignors interest" to the patents, which would protect the company against others who might later claim rights to the patent under color of title. The blog did not confirm whether or not Apple would actually hold title rights to the patents themselves, however.

The Atheros team will operate as Qualcomm Atheros, a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm. The Qualcomm connectivity team will shift over to Qualcomm Atheros to combine resources and roadmaps.

Applied Materials reported a fiscal second-quarter profit that nearly doubled from the year-earlier period, as the company saw stronger sales of semiconductor capital equipment. But shares of the company slipped nearly 2% in after-hours trading after it posted a weaker-than-anticipated outlook.

General Electric Co and Cree Inc denied on Tuesday that the largest U.S. conglomerate has selected the lighting manufacturer to supply GE light-emitting diodes, disputing an analyst's assertion.