Lam Research, which makes equipment used to manufacture semiconductors, said Thursday its third-quarter profit plummeted 94%, as restructuring costs and weaker demand weighed on the company's performance. Lam said earnings for the quarter ended Sept. 28 declined to US$8.9 million, or 7 cents per share, from US$148.6 million, or US$1.18 per share, in the same quarter last year.

..in July, there were plenty of executives who said they were dead set against 450mm, that it doesn't make economic sense, now or ever, that the industry should focus on reducing cycle times for 300mm tools, and so on. Executives at Applied Materials, ASML, Novellus, all have been adamant in their opposition to 450mm. But re the major IC makers that back the 450mm transition –Intel, Samsung, and TSMC –big enough to get what they want? If such companies control 60-70% of equipment spending, at some point will they get what they want?...

...Broadcom is aggressively expanding into the cell phone market where it competes with other players such as Qualcomm. But analyst Betsy Van Hees of Caris & Co. also pointed to broader industry concerns, saying, "...we think Broadcom will experience a challenging near-term macro environment impacting earnings and revenue growth."

Shares in Norwegian solar industry group Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) plunged more than 12% after it reported a smaller rise than expected in core earnings for the third quarter and said turmoil would hit demand in the short and medium term. But the group, one of the world's biggest producers of solar-grade silicon and wafers for solar energy systems, said its long-term market demand remained strong.

Unlisted Dutch chip maker NXP expects a sequential sales drop of 8-14%in the fourth quarter as economies slow and consumer confidence declines. "The financial crisis and semiconductor market conditions have caused a rapid deterioration of demand towards the end of the third quarter especially in sectors like automotive and consumer," NXP chief executive Frans van Houten said in a statement on Tuesday.

Samsung Electronics withdrew its US$5.8 billion offer to acquire SanDisk, saying it no longer believed SanDisk was worth the money it was offering and that SanDisk's refusal to entertain friendly discussions stymied hopes for a deal. In a letter to SanDisk's top executives, Samsung Chief Executive Officer Lee Yoon-woo said SanDisk's third-quarter loss and the subsequent restructuring of its chipmaking deal with Toshiba Corp. "point to a considerable increase in your risk profile and a material deterioration in value."

SanDisk said it is still "open" to a Samsung buyout offer and hinted at more restructuring to come, as the largest supplier of retail flash memory cards reported a third-quarter 2008 net loss of US$155 million on Monday. The loss was significantly worse than the net income of US$85 million reported in the third quarter of 2007. SanDisk and other flash memory chip suppliers have been hit by a steep price decline in flash.

Researchers have found a simple way to make high-performance electronic circuits from organic semiconductors. The advance, reported in this week's Nature, brings us one step closer to low-cost, bendable plastic electronics.

A related supporting platform will also be developed, supporting HSUPA/HSDPA/W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS/EDGE (2G) mobile telephony standards. Development of the platform is targeted for completion by the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 (January–March 2010). The new G4 will be fabricated with 45nm process technology and will provide enhanced functionality and improved performance for applications handling HD video and 3-D graphics.

Last year, the ITC ruled that certain new models of 3G wireless handsets with Qualcomm chipsets could not be imported because they infringed on a Broadcom patent. An appellate court stayed the ban in September, pending appeal. On Tuesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the ITC's ruling about the patent's validity. However, it reversed the import ban because Broadcom filed a complaint only against Qualcomm. The ITC could not ban products made by "downstream manufacturers."

..The company, whose customers include Intel, Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, sold 37 lithography machines in the third quarter at an average price of 16.0 million ($22.0 million), and received 31 new bookings. ASML forecast that it would sell 26 machines in the next quarter, which, along with the expected selling price of those units, was lower than Pacific Crest Securities analyst Weston Twigg had expected.

Elpida, which trails Samsung and Hynix, said it would allocate half of the funds raised by the one-year, zero-coupon bond issue to produce smaller versions of existing chips at its factory in Hiroshima, western Japan. The other half of the funds will be used on new equipment to make 50nm chips with Taiwan partner PSC to stay competitive, an Elpida spokesman said. Using 50nm circuits would allow Elpida to make even tinier chips that would halve the cost of making a semiconductopr compared with the company's existing chips.