Samsung on Tuesday revealed a new chip family to power the Internet of Things, putting it in more direct competition with Intel, Qualcomm and others in the quest to connect everything.

The world's most expensive semiconductor fabrication plant - at over US$14 billion - was announced at the ground breaking ceremony Thursday (May 7) by Samsung. Located in the Godeok Industrial Complex at Pyeongtaek City Gyeonggi-do Province - called "Samsung Semiconductor Valley" - in South Korea, Samsung will be building 10-nanometer FinFET semiconductors there.

Foxconn boss Terry Guo said he pushed Apple to choose TSMC because Taiwanese companies must stick together against the "Korean Wave."

The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge have recently been plagued by serious memory problems, as poor memory management is leading to massive slowdowns and random app crashes, including force closes.

Cramer said competitors like Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm, ARM and Nvidia will fight the deal in Washington because it has the potential to crunch their gross margins by bringing up costs. He also pointed out that Washington has been relatively unfriendly to larger mergers this year.

Samsung Electronics has inked an agreement to produce its 3D NAND solid state drives for Google, in a deal deemed to beef up the South Korean manufacturer's gameplay against its global competitors.

Qualcomm's second-quarter profit dropped 46%, mainly because of a large fine the company had to pay in China for settling antitrust issues. The company also cut its revenue outlook for 2015, citing loss of business for its Snapdragon processor from key customer Samsung Electronics and a concentration of the premium market around two players - Apple and Samsung, among other factors.

Samsung Electronics is set to spend at least another 10 trillion won (US$9.2 billion) to boost capacity at a new South Korean chip plant, a 64% increase over announced investment plans, domestic online news service MoneyToday reported.

Samsung Electronics' mobile chief warned on Thursday of limited supplies of its new curved-screen smartphones because of challenges in manufacturing the screens.

Samsung is already pushing out 14nm technology, using its own Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge smartphones to demonstrate its impressive new fabrication technology. But most don't know that the South Korean electronics giant has partnered with Globalfoundries, with the latter now spinning up its production of 14nm technology.

The guidance is slightly better than an average 35% decline forecast by a Dow Jones survey of eight analysts.

Dow Chemical is under pressure to deal with financial troubles in its Korean businesses after its strategic plans were put on hold due to issues with two major Korean clients.

Samsung Electronics may end up saving arch nemesis Apple about $533 million. That's how much Apple was told to pay after a jury in February said its iTunes service infringed patents owned by Texas licensing firm Smartflash.

RBC Capital Markets chip analyst Doug Freedman this morning writes that chip maker Nvidia, which makes no parts itself, appears to have moved some of its orders for making its chips from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) to Samsung Electronics, and that this may presage giving some foundry business to Intel.

TSMC will snatch more orders for Apple's A9 processor at the expense of Samsung, which is having yield problems with its most advanced technology node, according to sources interviewed by EE Times.

Samsung Electronics gave a big boost on Wednesday to Seoul's ambitions to become a global hub for the offshore yuan business, saying it was preparing to start trading the Chinese currency directly with the South Korean won.

Samsung's smartphone marketshare in Japan is so low the company is considering pulling out of the market to avoid ongoing losses.

The faster time to market for Samsung's 14nm process as well as potentially slightly bigger performance or power consumption benefits on TSMC's 16nm process must have convinced Apple that it's worth going back to Samsung.

Samsung Electronics has appointed a new smartphone marketing chief, less than a month before the expected unveiling of its next flagship Galaxy S handset.

Samsung has announced the first full-year revenue decline at its mobile division since 2006 - a 21% fall - analysts barely mentioned that business. They focused instead on the semiconductor arm.

Samsung Electronics said it is considering a stock split, the latest signal that the company is willing to bend to demands from shareholders and regulators as its shares trade at more than US$1,200 each.

Regarding the occupational disease controversy over workers at its semiconductor plants, Samsung Electronics has announced that it will extend its scope of compensation to include its workers who developed any blood-related cancers, including leukemia, and all former workers who left the company a decade ago.

Lee Don-tae, former co-president of UK design consulting firm Tangerine, founded by Apple's Jony Ive, has been hired by Samsung Electronics as its new head of global design.

BlackBerry and Samsung Electronics have denied reports that they are in talks about Samsung potentially acquiring the Canadian smartphone maker.

The settlement of China's anti-trust probe into Qualcomm is likely to intensify global scrutiny of the firm's highly profitable patent licensing business, and may even call into question its worldwide contracts with smartphone makers such as Apple and Samsung.

Samsung Electronics plans to invest KRW13.5 trillion (US$12 billion) in semiconductor facilities next year, up from the KRW13 trillion spent in 2014.

According to sources from South Korea, Samsung may be planning to build not just its own CPU core based on the ARMv8 architecture, but also its own GPU technology. We could see the new GPU, and possibly the new CPU as well, inside next year's Galaxy Note 5 device.

Samsung Electronics has joined hands with US-based Thermo Fisher Scientific in a bid to expand its presence in the medical industry with its smartphone business slowing down.

Samsung Group announced annual management changes at its business units on Monday but said top executives at its flagship unit Samsung Electronics will remain in their current positions as the company seeks to reverse recent profit declines.

Samsung Electronics' semiconductor sales are expected to jump 15.6% on year in 2014, closing the gap with industry leader Intel, a global market tracker said Sunday.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics has secured a licence to invest US$3 billion to expand its production in northern Vietnam, the Vietnamese government said.