TV panel chipmaker MStar Semiconductor plans to raise up to US$300 million in an IPO ahead of a listing in Taiwan slated for December, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Chipmaker Qualcomm wants to expand in Europe via both organic and acquisition-fueled growth, its top man in the region told a German daily in an interview published on Wednesday.

While Intel is almost certain to do other foundry deals like the one announced today, we don't see the chipmaker actually pursuing a real foundry model. Rather, Achronix and deals like it will enable Intel to develop new markets with less downside risk, and will ultimately grow the company's IDM business through acquisitions.

Canesta makes chips that, when coupled with a digital camera, give all manner of devices a sense of depth perception for the world around them, letting them "see" in three dimensions.

TriQuint Semiconductor has announced record quarterly revenues for the quarter ended October 2, 2010. Net profits for the quarter soared to US$110.9 million from NT$22.5 million in the second quarter and NT$10.5 million in third-quarter 2009.

European chipmaker STMicroelectronics has reported higher-than-expected net profits for the third quarter, and said sales would expand in the final three months of the year. STM's results follow recent upbeat earnings reports from Intel and ASML.

ARM shares, up 120% since the start of 2010, fell to their lowest in nearly two months after a statement overnight from Texas Instruments that end-demand for chips could be weakening.

But net sales for its third fiscal quarter ended September 26, 2010 grew to US$307.6 million, from US$255.7 million in the prior quarter and US$327.6 million a year ago.

Gemalto said in a statement it filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas for alleged infringement of its patented technologies in the open-source Android system and Dalvik operating environment.

"New Product sales were led by particularly strong growth from the Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 FPGA families," said Moshe Gavrielov, Xilinx President and CEO. "Combined sales from these families more than doubled sequentially in the September quarter..."

Programmable chipmaker Altera has forecast its sales would grow in the fourth quarter as China expands its wireless telephone infrastructure but some analysts warned that revenues could slow next year.

Infotech Enterprises, Verisilicon and Wipro have joined Globalsolutions, the sum of Globalfoundries' internal resources and ecosystem partners.

The world's largest memory chipmaker is forecast to invest US$9.2 billion in its semiconductors business next year, according to an industry report.

"Beceem's talented teams of engineers in India and the US have been focused on enabling a 4G ecosystem of operators and equipment manufacturers to drive the deployment of 4G networks," said Scott Bibaud, Broadcom's Executive VP & GM of the Mobile Platforms Group. "We look forward to adding their innovative technologies to our product portfolio and providing these technologies to our customers."

The global dominance of South Korean chipmakers is unlikely to be toppled anytime soon, even as Japanese and Taiwanese rivals consider forging stronger ties, according to a ratings agency. "In the medium term, Elpida's and Taiwanese chipmakers' increased competitiveness is unlikely to unseat the Korean's established advantages in technology and scale..."

The recent dust-up between China and Japan suggested how neighbours can have incompatible interests. But in business, things are often rather different. In one example, China's emergence as a producer of sophisticated technology is helping strengthen one of the few big microchip businesses left in Japan.

Software giant Oracle is keen to make more acquisitions to bolster its technology and a microchip company could be a good fit, according to company CEO Larry Ellison.

Japan's Sanyo Electric will close two of its domestic semiconductor plants by 2012, and move production to another plant along with about 1,000 workers, according to the Nikkei business daily.

LG Group said on September 17 it will not buy Hynix Semiconductor, dismissing market speculation that the group will join a bidding race for the purchase of a major stake in the memory chipmaker.

Disappointing sales forecasts from National Semiconductor and Texas Instruments triggered the sell-off. The letdown comes just two weeks after Intel warned its sales for July through September would fall below its earlier projections.

Altera has announced that its revenues for the third quarter are now expected to grow 10-14% on quarter. The company's prior guidance was for sequential growth of 4-8%.

"Never stop thinking" - the Infineon claim that employees once revised to "Never stop shrinking." That was five years ago, when Infineon spun off memory-chip unit Qimonda.

Two Russian tech companies, preparing to launch domestic microchip production in partnership with STMicroelectronics, are lobbying the state to ban imports of similar products, according to local newspapers.

The report comes out after a similar study has been commissioned by Samsung Electronics, which itself has faced complaints that unusual clusters of cancers have occurred at its semiconductor factory in Gi-Heung, south of Seoul.

The group aims to end a long and heated debate about the next big leap in disk technology and is expected eventually to include all drive makers and their component vendors.

Marvell's net income for the second quarter ended July 30 nearly quadrupled to US$219.8 million, compared with US$58 million a year ago. The results gave it confidence to start buying back stock, according to the chipmaker.

Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners and Highland Capital Partners represent the traditional venture capitalists behind Smooth-Stone. They have been joined by ARM, Texas Instruments and Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC).

NXP Semiconductors opened trading Friday (Aug. 6) on the Nasdaq exchange, its new shares seesawing with the rest of the turbulent equity market.

SMIC, China's largest foundry chipmaker, is close to receiving tens of millions of dollars from the China government in a move that could help its earnings this year.

Freescale Semiconductor may file to sell shares in an initial public offering by the end of 2010, according to two people briefed on the plan.

In the three months ended June 30, Infineon swung to a net profit of 126 million euros (US$164 million) from a loss of 24 million euros in the same period a year ago. The firm has raised its full-year outlook, expecting revenues to grow at least 40% in fiscal 2010 compared to the previous year.

Xilinx has announced first quarter fiscal 2011 sales of US$594.7 million, up 12% sequentially and 58% on year. Net profits for the quarter reached US$158.6 million, compared to profits of US$148.5 million in the prior quarter and US$38 million a year ago.

Qualcomm, the largest wireless chipmaker, has said the mobile phone industry had reached a "transformative stage" as it reported third-quarter sales and profits ahead of expectations.

The talk of a Samsung-Infineon deal surfaced in German publication Manager Magazine but neither firm would comment. Two years ago, Samsung greatly extended its purchasing of cellphone chips from Infineon, largely at the expense of Qualcomm.

Programmable logic vendor Altera set a new all-time high in quarterly sales in the second quarter of 2010. It also beat consensus analyst expectations for sales and net income during the quarter.

GSI Technology is growing fast by selling specialty memory chips, but the small company wants to grow to the next level.

Hitachi's delay in supplying electronic controls to Nissan was caused by STMicroelectronics' failure to meet a microchip order.

Shares of most DRAM makers have underperformed their respective benchmark indexes in Asia so far this year, as European sovereign-debt troubles surfaced and clouded views on global economic growth.

Intel continues to make a push back into the cell-phone chip business - "sometimes under the radar" - as it acquired Comsys Mobile Communication and Signal Processing for US$30 million in late May, according to Forward Concepts.

Atmel has agreed to sell its smart card business to Inside Contactless for US$37 million in cash and up to $21 million more if targets are met. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the third quarter of 2010, subject to certain closing conditions.