Chinese battery manufacturer BYD, which is readying a line of all-electric vehicles, plans to introduce a home energy suite that includes solar panels and batteries.

Car maker Chery Automobile Co is keen to buy into the solar energy business of Taiwanese LCD panel maker AU Optronics,

Xilinx has announced that NEC Display Solutions has adopted the Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA family for three models of its DLP Cinema projectors.

Lithography light source vendor Cymer swung to net profits of US$16 million in the first quarter of 2010 compared to losses of US$11.5 million a year earlier.

STMicroelectronics, Europe's largest semiconductor company, swung to profits of US$57 million in the first quarter of 2010 from losses of US$541 million a year ago. First-quarter revenues rose 40% to US$2.32 billion, led particularly by demand for chips used in cars and computers.

Rambus has net profits of US$150.9 million for the first quarter, compared with losses of US$17.4 million in the same quarter last year. Revenues for the quarter soared 492% to US$161.9 million, thanks to a licensing agreement with Samsung.

Infineon Technologies and Fairchild Semiconductor have announced an agreement to create compatibility between their power MOSFET packages. Specifically the agreement covers the Infineon PowerStage 3x3 and Fairchild MLP 3x3 packages.

SanDisk swung to net profits of US$235 million for the quarter ended April 4 from losses of US$208 million a year ago. "We delivered SanDisk's first ever billion dollar Q1 in total revenue. This performance was driven by several factors including our OEM business which grew to 63% of product revenues balancing out Q1 retail seasonality..."

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is poised to secure net profits for the fiscal year ended December 21, 2010, according to company president and CEO Steve Milligan. Brisk demand for PC hard drives and fixed-cost reductions will contribute to its profit outlook.

Toshiba, one of Japan's largest electronics companies, has said it expects net losses of 20 billion yen (US$215 million) for the fiscal year ending March 2010. That's down from its previous estimtae of 50 billion yen.

The sources said parliamentary experts in Chancellor Angela Merkel's centre-right administration agreed that so-called feed-in tariffs for new rooftop solar installations will be cut by 16 percent from July as planned. Most open-field installations will be cut by 15 percent, with support for farmland solar systems to be scrapped completely, the sources said.

OCZ Technology has been approved to be listed on the Nasdaq Capital Markets and will commence trading its common stock under ticker symbol "OCZ" on April 23.

Qualcomm has reported profits of US$774 million for the second quarter of its fiscal 2010, compared with losses of US$289 million a year ago. The company suggested it might fall short of Wall Street's expectations for the current quarter.

Currently, Apple pays royalties for ARM's chip designs used in its products. If the company acquired ARM, it could conceivably raise licensing costs to rivals or even take ARM designs off the market.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp.'s battery- making venture with GS Yuasa Corp. is considering producing lithium-ion cells in Europe as demand in the region for electric cars grows.

Altera has reported net profits of US$153.2 million for the irst quarter, compared with profits of US$44.0 million a year earlier. "We are benefiting from growth in our 65nm and 40nm FPGAs as customer designs transition from prototyping into production," said company CEO John Daane.

IM Flash Technologies has advertised dozens of jobs openings in the island city-state of Singapore for its 300mm fab. IM Flash Singapore is currently looking to fill 61 jobs, including engineering, procurement and recruiting positions which points that they are closer to ramp-up.

Pacific Crest Securities has downgraded SanDisk to underperform, saying the maker of memory chips may be headed for a period of flat market dynamics.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) has said it plans to book several charges to its 2009 results. It also raised its first-quarter revenue guidance, projecting a 4%-6% increase from fourth-quarter revenues of US$333.1 million.

Most believe TSMC will remain a foundry in the IC sector, but not in LEDs. There is little or no business model in the LED foundry sector. Most LED vendors have their own fabs and the startup costs are minor compared to the IC industry. The real value-added in LEDs is technology and the channels.

Ultimately, only ramped up production will drive SSD prices down, and that is not expected to begin until 2011.

For some time, there has been shortages of DRAMs, causing prices to increase for both DDR2 and DDR3. Now, PC OEMs have reached the boiling point amid the price hikes.

DDR3 spot pricing has been stable for several weeks; however, with several contract price increases the gap between spot and direct is narrowing.

Spansion has received approval and confirmation of its plan of reorganization from the US Bankruptcy Court, which clears the way for Spansion's emergence from Chapter 11.

Chip equipment maker Novellus Systems now expects to earn US$0.43 per share, US$0.04 above the high end of the range it had forecast in March. The company is scheduled to report first-quarter earnings on April 21.

"The trouble is that you can't get tools (from ASML). The lead times have extended..."

South Korea plans to invest 60 billion won (US$54 million) until 2015 to build up its analog chip industry to help local companies expand their presence in the global semiconductor market, according to the government.

Samsung Electronics said workers at its semiconductor factories face no heightened cancer risk as the world's top maker of memory chips tried to quell health fears following employee illnesses and deaths.

Micron Technology will bring faster interfaces to its enterprise SSD (solid-state disk) line in June when it begins shipping its P300 drives to makers of storage equipment.