Word on the street is that Micron is seeking to enter the NOR flash market. Some also speculated that Intel wants to unload its interest in Numonyx.

Shares of memory chip developer Rambus rose 8% on September 4 on speculation that Samsung Electronics would buy the company, but Samsung said it had no such plans.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics said in a disclosure that it is no longer pursuing a plan to purchase SanDisk.

Japan's Elpida Memory has said that it was in talks about taking over German chipmaker Qimonda's high-end graphics DRAM operations to bolster its product lineup.

When consolidation comes as the expense of innovation, the results can be toxic.

MIPS Technologies on May 8 announced Synopsys has acquired its Analog Business Group in an all-cash transaction for US$22 million.

Chip-making companies Renesas Technology and NEC Electronics have agreed to integrate their operations by April next year, in a move that will form an entity surpassing Toshiba as Japan's largest chip maker, according to reports Friday.

An end-of-March deadline for Qimonda AG to find investors has been extended, and liquidation of the memory-chip maker is still a possibility, according to court officials in Munich.

International Business Machines is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems in a combination that would bolster IBM's heft on the Internet, in data storage and in government and telecommunications areas, according to people familiar with the matter.

Infineon Technologies AG, Europe's second-largest chipmaker, would consider merging with another company although a partner may be hard to find because of the economic crisis, CEO Peter Bauer said.

Fujitsu and Toshiba has announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the transfer of Fujitsu's hard disk drive (HDD) business to Toshiba. The companies plan to conclude a transfer contract at an early date, and aim to complete the transaction in the first quarter of fiscal 2009.

After months of potential acquisition talks, Microchip Technology Inc Tuesday officially ended its pursuit of FPGA maker Atmel.

Spansion, the NOR flash manufacturer which bought Israel NROM company Saifun last year, has hired Barclay's Capital to investigate ways of selling itself to another company, or entering a partnership with another company.

Japanese electronics giant Toshiba has confirmed it is in talks to buy Fujitsu's hard disk drive (HDD) arm. The Nikkei business daily said any deal between Fujitsu and Toshiba would be worth 30bn-40bn yen ($340m-$450m; £233m-£308m).

"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."