"The contract is expected to rise to US$11 billion by the end of this year as Apple is planning to release a smaller iPad, probably with a 7.85-inch screen, and to sell more of its MacBook Air PCs using Samsung's faster SSD storage," said a Samsung official.

Hynix Semiconductor said the chip industry is set to recover from the second half of this year as the prices of DRAM chips have been rebounding following news of Japanese chip maker Elpida Memory's bankruptcy protection filing late last month.

Infineon's chief executive Peter Bauer has said the company wants to generate 50% of its total sales from Asia over the long term. Since it made over 40% of sales from Asia in fiscal 2011, it is clearly making progress on its target.

Applied Materials and the Institute of Microelectronics (IME), a research institute under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), have officially opened the Centre of Excellence in Advanced Packaging at Singapore's Science Park II.

The weak demand for TI's wireless products such as smartphones and tablets is mainly in its OMAP applications processors and connectivity products, said TI vice president Ron Slaymaker.

"It is likely to mean fewer goods are 'Made in Japan', but more are 'Made by Japan'," said David Rea, Japan economist at Capital Economics.

Around 11,000 people gathered in Berlin on 5 March to protest against further cuts to the support for solar photovoltaics (PV) in Germany from April.

The federal government spent $24 billion on energy subsidies in 2011, with the vast majority going to renewable energy sources, according to a government report.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday proposed expanding tax credits to make alternative-energy cars and trucks more appealing to buyers.

Japan's Sumco is in final talks with a turnaround fund backed by the country's major banks to raise JPY15 billion (US$186 million) by issuing preferred shares, a source familiar with the deal said on Thursday.

Rumors surfaced online today that claim TSMC has pulled the plug on their 28nm manufacturing lines and that the company started to test and tune the machines to improve yields.

Qualcomm has said it plans to buy back as much as US$4 billion of shares and raise its dividend by 16% to return cash to shareholders as earnings increase.

Hitachi has sold all 12.8 million shares of Elpida, spokesman Yuichi Izumisawa said by phone today, confirming an earlier Nikkei report.

A new trade organization, established by First Solar and rival CdTe thin film module producers and suppliers has been formed to promote and educate on the technology's attributes.

Advanced Micro Devices has said it agreed to a negotiated wafer price mechanism with Globalfoundries for 2012 and also agreed to transfer its remaining ownership interest in that company to the firm itself.

At 1pm local time Monday March 5, thousands, including employees from around 50 solar companies, will converge in Berlin at the Brandeburger Tor to protest against harsh cuts to the proposed feed-in tariff legislation.

SMA Solar, Germany's top solar company, forecast sales and operating margins will fall significantly in 2012, blaming the German government's March 9 decision to slash state-mandated incentives for photovoltaic electricity.

Germany, the world's biggest solar- power market, may delay a plan to cut subsidies in the industry by at least three weeks to allow developers to complete projects, a lawmaker said.

With DDR4 DRAM set to hit the market in 2013, two manufacturers took the opportunity at this year's ISSCC to demonstrate their DDR4 DRAM.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet endorsed plans on Wednesday to cut state-mandated incentives for photovoltaic electricity in the world's largest market for solar power by up to 30% on March 9, coalition sources told Reuters.

GE Energy Financial Services has announced 2011 was a record year for its global solar power investments, with the company doubling its solar spending commitments in the past year to $1.4 billion, reaching a total of nearly $5 billion in projects.

Brite Semiconductor, Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) and ARM have jointly announced the first tape out of a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore test chip using SMIC's 40nm low leakage process technology.

Clearly, this action tends to cast doubt on the validity of all future data published by WSTS. That sort of uncertainty has a huge ripple effect. It will impact chip companies doing planning and forecasting, market research analysts who depend on WSTS numbers - interpret them and predict market trends, and broad-spectrum media outlets.