Hynix Semiconductor plans to reduce its debt by one trillion won (US$870m) in 2010 due to forecasts for record sales and supply shortages in the global semiconductor industry.

Samsung Electronics expects global smartphone sales to double to 393 million units by 2013, according to the head of the company's mobile communications business.

"Asia is a very strategic region for Spansion in the fast growing embedded electronics markets," said John Kispert, president and CEO of Spansion. "With the addition of SL Chan, we have strengthened our team with a veteran sales and marketing executive who will be a key asset for the company's new business strategy..."

China-based Vimicro International, which has posted two consecutive annual losses, may break even in 2010 as economic recovery bolsters its domestic sales, according to company chairman John Deng.

Many of the nation's top retail chains reported much stronger-than-expected February sales Thursday, furthering hopes that U.S. consumers are starting to loosen their purse strings.

SanDisk now expects first-quarter revenues will reach between NT$925 million and NT$1 billion, compared to the originally estimated NT$875-925 million. (and vs. consensus estimates of $942.4 million).

The strong start prompted Applied Materials to brighten its outlook for the fiscal 2010. The company expects its sales to increase by more than 50%, up from its previous forecast of a 30% gain.

First Solar has posted a higher-than-expected profit, but its shares fell as its outlook disappointed and profit margins narrowed.

Samsung Electronics has overtaken Hewlett-Packard as the world's biggest technology company by sales, a sign of how strongly some South Korean companies have bounced back from the economic downturn.

SanDisk beat analysts' estimates as sales for memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras, USB flash drives and other electronics climbed 22% from the third quarter to the fourth quarter.

In 2009, TSMC topped the list of foundries with US$9.0 billion in sales. TSMC's sales were about 3X that of UMC, which in turn had more than the combined foundry sales of Chartered and SMIC in 2009.

Canon has reported a more than fivefold jump in profits for the final three months of 2009 after sales of digital cameras grew strongly.

Both Seagate and rival Western Digital have seen demand for disk drives return even as supplies of the devices remain low, pushing up profits.

Spansion has reported net sales of US$307.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2009, which marked its second consecutive profitable quarter with net income on a US GAAP basis of US$4.3 million.

Huawei has spread especially quickly across the developing world and it has benefited from large spending by China's state-owned mobile carriers as they expand their 3G networks.

Infineon Technologies has said revenues will grow by a better-than-expected "high single digit" in the quarter ending December 31, 2009 on improved sales in the automotive and industrial units.

Palm trimmed its net loss and said it had shipped a total of 783,000 smartphones to retailers in its fiscal second quarter, which ended Nov. 27. That was up 41% compared with the second quarter last year, but down 5% compared with the first quarter.