Gold prices eased slightly in Asia on Wednesday as tension between Russia and the Ukraine appeared to have tamped down further.

More than 450 employees at NXP Semiconductors wafer fab in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, have held a two-hour strike in protest at stalled wage negotiations, according to local reports.

Intel is in the process of buying smartwatch startup Basis, as part of the tech giant's new focus on wearables and the Internet of Things.

Broadcom has announced that Datang Mobile, a core subsidiary of the Datang Telecom Technology and Industry Group, has selected Broadcom's dual-mode TD-SCDMA/TD-LTE system-on-chip (SoC) to develop a new family of enterprise and residential small cell solutions.

Amtech Systems, a supplier of production and automation systems and related supplies for the manufacture of solar cells, semiconductors, and sapphire and silicon wafers, has received approximately US$10 million in new solar orders.

Deal will make TSMC Solar's 'CIGS' modules available across North America.

Intel is expecting its next Atom tablet chip, code-named Cherry Trail, to be in devices by the end of 2014, the company said this week.

Chipmaker Avago Technologies said it expects current-quarter sales to decline 3-6% from the first quarter as it lost revenue from a smartphone maker, which analysts said could be Apple.

In 1979, when Richard Branson bought the 74-acre Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands, he paid less than $300,000.

Did you hear that a barge leaked 31,500 gallons of crude oil into the Mississippi River over the weekend? When the tanker collided with a tugboat, the resulting spill caused 65 miles of the river to be shut down for two days as New Orleans Port traffic ground to a halt and drinking water intakes were closed.

Despite ditching Motorola, Google's plans to disrupt the smartphone world continue apace and the internet giant is intent on converting phones from closed devices to modular devices whose components can be stuck together to achieve different outcomes.

Samsung's decision to drop Android in its latest wearables could have effects that ripple out to future smart watches and fit bands, according to analysts.

The companies are already selling lots of phones. But most of those sales are coming in China, and both companies admit they have work cut out for them elsewhere, including in the United States.

Fujitsu, NTT Docomo and NEC will dissolve by March a joint venture for developing core chips for smartphones. The venture, Access Network Technology, was formed in August 2012 to develop baseband chips.

GCT Semiconductor has licensed the Cadence Tensilica ConnX BBE16 digital signal processing (DSP) core for a next-generation chipset targeting mobile applications.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association has announced the publication of Release 6 of the DDR3 Serial Presence Detect (SPD) document. The updated standard describes new memory timing parameters and enables higher capacity memory modules.

The Gobi 9x30 is the world's first commercially announced cellular modem for automotive based on the 20nm technology node with support for global carrier aggregation deployments up to 40MHz in both LTE FDD and TDD modes.

Toshiba has developed what it claims is the world's fastest device controller for embedded NAND flash memory modules compliant with the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver.2.0 and UFS Unified Memory Extension (UME) Ver.1.0 standards defined by JEDEC Solid State Technology Association (JEDEC).

International Rectifier (IR) has commenced initial production at its new ultra-thin wafer processing facility in Singapore. Wafer thinning, metallization, testing and additional proprietary wafer level processing are undertaken at the new 60,000 square foot manufacturing site which receives processed wafers from IR's internal fabs and foundry partners.

RF Micro Devices and TriQuint Semiconductor have announced a definitive merger agreement under which the companies will combine in an all-stock transaction. To reflect the nature of this transaction as a merger of equals, the new company will have a new name and shared leadership team.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor with integrated LTE. Additionally, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor is featured in the Samsung Galaxy Grand 2, bringing LTE connectivity in mainstream smartphones.

Profits at Sina, owner of China's largest Twitter-like site Weibo, surged in the fourth quarter, boosted by a jump in advertising revenue.

InvenSense has announced a turnkey wearable platform solution intended to substantially shorten the time-to-market for any OEM or ODM.

Hillcrest Labs has announced that Oppo, a China-based CE manufacturer and smartphone OEM, is using Hillcrest's patented Freespace software to provide advanced motion-based functionality on their latest smartphones.

Qualcomm has leaped ahead of Apple in 64-bit mobile chip development with its first eight-core Snapdragon 615 chip for mobile devices, which has integrated LTE and 4K video rendering capabilities.

Renesas Electronics has developed what it claims is the industry's first 28-nanometer (nm) flash memory intellectual property (IP) for microcontrollers (MCUs) using a 28nm process technology.

Sony's flagships have struggled to find success, but that hasn't stopped the company from quickly iterating its smartphone line to keep up with its rivals.

Chinese mobile technology leader Huawei unveiled the latest additions to its stable Sunday in Barcelona, ahead of the 2014 World Mobile Congress, including its "hybrid" fitness band/smart watch.

LG Electronics said it will launch a computerized wristwatch later this year, entering a nascent market where Samsung Electronics, Sony and smaller companies such as Pebble are already jostling for dominance.

Samsung has released two updated versions of its Gear smartwatch featuring slimmer designs and heart rate sensors beating Apple to the release of a health-tracking smartwatch.

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth claims that Apple has acquired a large supply of sapphire displays, possibly alluding to displays with sapphire material that would be used on a future Apple iPhone.

WhatsApp's jaw-dropping US$19 billion price tag took the world by surprise. But Facebook might have actually gotten WhatsApp for cheap.

Hewlett-Packard reported fiscal first-quarter sales and profit that topped analysts' estimates as the personal-computer maker won new orders for corporate machines and servers to run data centers.

Google has unveiled a prototype smartphone with "customised hardware and software" that enables it to create 3D maps of a user's surroundings.

A smartwatch prototype based on Qualcomm's Toq device will be previewed to carriers at the Mobile World Congress trade show, with no plans to unveil the device publicly, the person said, asking not to be identified because the details haven't been released.