Forecast downgrades from American chipmakers Texas Instruments and Broadcom sapped yet more investor confidence from technology stocks in Europe on Tuesday, with German semiconductor firm Infineon bearing the brunt of the sell-off.

Research shows that this trend towards power-hungry applications is only set to continue. According to Strategy Analytics, voice call, MP3, FM radio and other handset activities are forecast to remain relatively constant through 2015. However, the use of multimedia functions will increase.

Texas Instruments, a major provider of processors for mobile phones and other devices, has pulled down its profit forecast for the December quarter by as much as two-thirds on Monday. The company also cut its revenue expectations, saying the economic downturn is having a powerful impact on the market for its chips.

"The bottom is yet to come," said Jae H. Lee, an analyst at Daiwa Securities. "Oversupply is a given fact until next year and chip companies will have to cut down capacity." "We currently see no reason to be invested in the memory sector," said Robert Lea, an analyst with UBS. "We believe the industry recovery has been pushed out to 2010."

Fourteen of the world's largest mobile phone and chip makers, including Sony Ericsson, Vodafone and ARM, joined the Open Handset Alliance on Tuesday to support the Android mobile device platform developed by Google Inc.

Spansion said in a statement that the decision is consistent with other chip manufacturers in the industry that are also suffering from decreased demand for flash memory.

When the new Macbooks came out a few weeks ago, Nvidia stated that the chips they provided to Apple did not contain the so-called bad bumps material believed to have caused higher-than-expected defect rates in certain notebooks, namely from HP and Dell, under certain usage models. But an investigation lead by The Inquirer seems to show this not to be the case.

Yesterday Lee Youn-ho, South Korea's minister of knowledge and economy, said that creditors had almost agreed on support measures for the world's second largest chipmaker. "At the moment, the government is not considering direct support [for Hynix] because shareholders have agreed on providing liquidity to some extent," Mr Lee told foreign correspondents. "But if creditors can't help out Hynix, then the government may look into it."

In late December and early next year, TI also plans to idle some undisclosed fabs amid a drop in demand. On average, the company sees fab utilization rates hitting the mid-40 percent range in the fourth quarter, compared to the mid-60 percent range in the third quarter. This represents TI's lowest fab utilization rates since the second half of 2001.

AMD and Abu Dhabi-based ATIC and Mubadala have renegotiated some of the financial details of their deal,inked in October, to transfer ownership of AMD's foundry business and assets, to more closely reflect the current market value of the sale.

Hynix Semiconductor has sought 1 trillion won ($691 million) in financial support from its creditors as it faces a liquidity crunch and struggles as chip prices are falling, reports say.

The growth pace of China's new energy industry is seriously dented by oil price slump and demand shrinkage due to the global financial crisis, according to analysts.

A spokesperson from TSMC says that from December 2008, employees who work in TSMC's manufacturing departments will take as many as five unpaid days each month and those who work in other departments will take one unpaid day each week staring from January 2009. At the same time, the transport allowance that was previously paid to the company's managing staff will also be canceled.

“In the area of memory, because of the supply overhang, it will be difficult for us to make a profit,” Executive Vice President Chu Woo Sik, head of Samsung’s investor-relations team, said today at an event in San Francisco. “LCD is struggling very hard to make a profit.”

Texas Instruments (TI) has lowered its expected ranges for fourth-quarter revenue and earnings per share (EPS). The company now expects its revenue will range from U$$2.3-2.5 billion, compared with the prior range of US$2.83-3.07 billion; and EPS will be US$0.10–0.16, compared with the prior range of US$0.30–0.36.

Due to the current global economic environment, customers across each of Broadcom's targeted end markets have requested adjustments in their deliveries for the fourth quarter, resulting in significant pushouts and cancellations since the company originally provided guidance for the quarter in October 2008.

Programmable chipmaker Altera has slashed its fourth-quarter outlook, citing weaker-than-expected sales across all market segments. The company said it now expects revenue to fall 9-12% from the third-quarter, implying a range of around US$312-323 million.

Intel researchers have made the next advance in the field of Silicon Photonics by achieving world-record performance using a silicon-based Avalanche Photodetector (APD) that could lower costs and improve performance as compared to commercially available optical devices. The research results were published today in Nature Photonics.

Shares of OmniVision Technologies tumbled Wednesday after the maker of camera image-sensing chips projected a third-quarter loss, disappointing most analysts who expected a profit.

A growing percentage of cell phones, PDAs, and high-speed microprocessors are assembled with flip chip technology today. If the reliability and cost reduction decades can be shortened to 3-5 years each, then high-volume production using TSVs could happen in 6-10 years, i.e., 2015-2020. If not, then high volume production will start after 2020.

The i6-Goal has been created by local phonemaker QIGI and mobile software developer TechFaith Wireless Communication Technology. The latter is likely to have a key input into China Mobile’s plans to create its own take on Android, and this could, in turn, enhance the influence of Qualcomm, which has come out as a major supporter of the Google system.

"The electronics group Hynix was already rescued once by the South Korean state bank and now has emerged as interested in Qimonda." Asked about the comment, a Hynix spokeswoman in South Korea denied any interest in Infineon or Qimonda assets.

"The joint venture is evaluating plans for operations over the holiday season, including a possible stoppage of some production lines," a SanDisk spokesman said Friday. "We constantly consider manufacturing schedules in light of market requirements and this is particularly true during the holiday season," he added. This follows a Bloomberg report that said Toshiba is considering a "partial stoppage" of flash memory production in Japan over the holidays.

Wafer shipments at the world's top two foundries, TSMC and UMC, are set to plunge further than anticipated in 4Q, but the picture for 1Q is even uglier with "historic lows" looming for utilizations, according to an analyst report.

Smart dust is based on microelectromechanical systems, or MEMs. These tiny computer chips can measure temperatures, vibrations or surface pressures. Smart sensors relay signals back to a command computer, which then compiles the data to give feedback to plant managers. Or the results could trigger an automatic response, such as turning down a building's temperature or reducing the flow of oil.

The world's second-biggest maker of memory chips will eliminate 30 percent of its executives and cut labor costs by more than 15 percent because of the global economic slowdown.

Hynix Semiconductor is facing a cash crisis as losses deepened to over 1.4 trillion won in 2008. The Korean Government support via Korean banks mirrors the potential intervention of the Taiwan Government in facilitating further credit instruments for Taiwan’s struggling DRAM manufacturers.

Including Qimonda, Infineon posted a net loss of ？763 million for the period ending Sept. 30 compared with a net loss of ？280 million a year earlier and a net loss of ？592 million in the previous quarter.

"The sector is in a dire situation," said Toshiba Senior Executive Vice President Masashi Muromachi. "Sales prices tumbled 40 percent or so in the first half and they are falling faster than expected in the second half." Muromachi also said that World Semiconductor Trade Statistics's revised forecast for 6.5% growth in global sales of semiconductors in 2010 was still high.

Plummeting demand for computer chips is affecting IT centers around the globe. The eastern German state of Saxony is one of the areas trying to survive a year that experts are already calling a disaster.