Intel has announced the opening of a massive US$1 billion chip testing and assembly facility in Vietnam. The factory has a total area of 46,000 square meters.

Sharp cut its annual profit forecast by 40%, citing the stronger yen and falling prices of panels. Net income will probably total 30 billion yen (US$367 million) in the year to March 2011, down from its previous forecast of 50 billion yen.

Singapore-based chip packager STATS ChipPAC has posted revenues of US$432.2 million in the third quarter of 2010, down by marginal 0.7% sequentially but up 10.9% on year. "We expect net revenues in the fourth quarter of 2010 to decline by single-digit level from prior quarter..."

ZTE, one of China's largest network equipment and phone suppliers, is set to buy US$3 billion worth of semiconductor components from five US technology vendors. It has signed the purchase agreements with Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Freescale Semiconductor, Altera and Broadcom.

TriQuint Semiconductor has announced record quarterly revenues for the quarter ended October 2, 2010. Net profits for the quarter soared to US$110.9 million from NT$22.5 million in the second quarter and NT$10.5 million in third-quarter 2009.

European chipmaker STMicroelectronics has reported higher-than-expected net profits for the third quarter, and said sales would expand in the final three months of the year. STM's results follow recent upbeat earnings reports from Intel and ASML.

The first solar energy project on federal land has broken ground in California's Mojave Desert.

The US$2.5 billion chip factory is producing chips on 12-inch silicon wafers, mainly chipsets to be used in desktop computers, laptops and servers. The factory is already fully operational.

ARM shares, up 120% since the start of 2010, fell to their lowest in nearly two months after a statement overnight from Texas Instruments that end-demand for chips could be weakening.

But net sales for its third fiscal quarter ended September 26, 2010 grew to US$307.6 million, from US$255.7 million in the prior quarter and US$327.6 million a year ago.

There may be 14 foreign firms approved to set up R&D centers in Taiwan this year, including those to be publicized by Elpida and Corning soon, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

Toshiba made 48% of its products in Japan in the period from April to September 2009 and bought 45% of its components from Japan-based suppliers. By the same period this year, the ratios were down to 44% and 42%, respectively. The change added 4.2 billion yen to Toshiba's operating profits in the half to September, or 700 million yen for each one-yen increase in the Japanese currency's value against the dollar.

The company's US subsidiaries, Qimonda North America and Qimonda Richmond, have acknowledged the parent's ownership of over 800 patents and patent applications and abandoned claims of over US$2.1 billion against Qimonda. "We will now put all our efforts into continuing to exploit the patent portfolio by licensing and selling individual packages," said Qimonda insolvency administrator Michael Jaffe.

Applied Materials announced that Hareon Solar has selected its SmartFactory manufacturing automation software to improve productivity across Hareon's solar photovoltaic (PV) cell manufacturing operations in China.

But shares of Veeco, which makes precision manufacturing equipment for the LED and data storage markets, slipped after hours as the company predicted some revenue slated for the fourth quarter may not come in until early next year.

Rambus saw its results improve in the third quarter of 2010 thanks to a licensing deal signed earlier this year with former legal opponent Samsung Electronics. It is negotiating to renew deals with Toshiba and Renesas Electronics after their patent licenses expired.

"New Product sales were led by particularly strong growth from the Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 FPGA families," said Moshe Gavrielov, Xilinx President and CEO. "Combined sales from these families more than doubled sequentially in the September quarter..."

The complete Spansion SPI product portfolio now spans densities from 4Mb through 256Mb.

NOR flash supplier Spansion has named Saied Tehrani as senior vice president of research and development. Tehrani joins Spansion from Everspin Technologies, a supplier of MRAMs, where he was founder and chief operating officer.

Western Digital has sought to reassure investors about the slowing hard-drive business, as the advent of tablet computers eats into computer demand.

Toshiba's operating profits for the April-September period is set to come to more than 100 billion yen (US$1.2 billion), beating the company's forecast of 70 billion yen, according to the Nikkei business daily. Booming global sales of smartphones have boosted demand for the company's flash memory chips and small LCD panels.

Programmable chipmaker Altera has forecast its sales would grow in the fourth quarter as China expands its wireless telephone infrastructure but some analysts warned that revenues could slow next year.

Infotech Enterprises, Verisilicon and Wipro have joined Globalsolutions, the sum of Globalfoundries' internal resources and ecosystem partners.

"With the Embedded Initiative, Altera is enabling designers in markets such as automotive, industrial, military and wireless to easily leverage a rich ecosystem of processor, OS and IP support all through a single design flow, and to reduce overall system cost..."

The world's largest memory chipmaker is forecast to invest US$9.2 billion in its semiconductors business next year, according to an industry report.

TriQuint Semiconductor Inc. on Tuesday hiked its estimates for third-quarter revenue and income, citing strong demand.

"Beceem's talented teams of engineers in India and the US have been focused on enabling a 4G ecosystem of operators and equipment manufacturers to drive the deployment of 4G networks," said Scott Bibaud, Broadcom's Executive VP & GM of the Mobile Platforms Group. "We look forward to adding their innovative technologies to our product portfolio and providing these technologies to our customers."

Solar energy and wind power will be strategic industries leading Korea's economy, with the government deciding to invest 40 trillion won in the renewable energy field by 2015 in partnership with the private sector so they can take the place in the nation's economy semiconductors and shipbuilding had in the past.

A Glass Lewis release said: "Micron Technology's performance has steadily deteriorated during the past three years, culminating in a US$1.8 billion loss in 2009 and a return on equity of negative 33.9%, one of the lowest among the companies appearing on our Overpaid 25 list." Micron has not had a good return from its investment in Appleton based on these figures.