STMicroelectronics, Europe's largest chipmaker, fell the most in six weeks in Milan trading after saying second-quarter sales will be held back by a decline at its joint venture with Ericsson. Dubbed ST- Ericsson, the venture is completing a shift to a new lineup targeting smartphone and tablet markets.

TriQuint Semiconductor's first-quarter earnings met analysts' expectations, helped by strong demand in the smartphone market, but the wireless communications products supplier forecast lower-than-expected second-quarter earnings.

Verizon Wireless will start selling the HTC's Droid Incredible 2 on April 28 while Sprint will put the Nexus S 4G from Google on sale May 8. Both smartphones will sell for US$199.99 with two year service agreements.

ARM, the UK designer of chips that help power Apple's iPhone, said first-quarter sales rose 26% on booming demand for smartphones and tablet computers.

Qualcomm reported record quarterly revenues and raised its guidance for 2011 as global demand for smartphones and tablets grew. Supply-chain concerns stemming from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan had not affected Qualcomm's ability to make chips, and it had seen very little impact on demand for its products, the company said.

Smartphones and tablets will be the first devices to use ARM's upcoming Cortex-A15 processor, and will be available starting late 2012 or early 2013, said James Bruce, the US mobile segment manager at ARM.

According to Samsung South Korea, the smartphone maker "will be releasing a smartphone that boasts performance levels matching desktop PCs." That's because this upcoming device will come equipped with a dual-core processor running at 2GHz.

Zoom Technologies has signed a licensing pact with chipmaker Qualcomm, allowing the Chinese mobile phone maker to develop and sell 3G devices using Qualcomm's chip patents.

Cisco is shutting down the consumer-oriented Flip camera business that it bought for US$590 million in 2009. The move will mean the loss of 550 jobs worldwide, cost Cisco US$300 million - and disappoint thousands of users who had enjoyed the devices' simplicity.

Nokia workers are bracing for what may be the steepest job cuts in almost two decades as the company prepares to start a partnership with Microsoft. A reduction in R&D activities is set to be announced by the end of April, with as many as 6,000 jobs under threat.

ZTE says it will quadruple the number of smartphones it ships globally to 12 million this year, including its first model for a top-tier wireless provider in the US Huawei, which already provides a smartphone to the smaller prepaid providers, said it is in talks with the four national carriers.

Nokia may be moving toward Windows Phone, but with the T-Mobile Astound (C7), it shows that with a few needed upgrades, Symbian can still function as a good entry-level smartphone.

Nokia is targeting those feature phone users who haven't yet made the move to a smartphone with the new Nokia Astound. It will be available April 6 through T-Mobile USA for $79.99 after rebate and with a two-year service agreement and qualifying voice and data plan.

A report from Strategy Analytics shows that Apple dominated the smartphone revenue stakes for 2010, followed by Nokia and Research in Motion (RIM).

If true, this report confirms the February statement of Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who said Microsoft has paid Nokia an "incredible" amount of money for the smartphone deal.

Qualcomm expects to see a decline in its operating margins for its chipset business in the coming year as smartphone growth drives more competitive pricing.

Cheap sensors and network availability are not only making individual cars smarter, but they're also boosting the brainpower the environment cars drive in.

The processor used in the smartphones, the PXA920, was introduced by Marvell a year ago, and Marvell said it's the first single-chip offering for TD-SCDMA.

The chipmaker made the announcement Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress, where it also introduced mobile communications chips for phones. Medfield is Intel's second smartphone processor. The first, Moorestown, did not have much success in the market due to power consumption too high for smartphones.

Like Ford Sync, it will allow you to use your smartphone, play music and other vehicle functions by voice command. It has a feature that displays and name of the musical artist and the song.

The new naming system will be first applied to the dual-core processor codenamed Orion, which was announced in September 2010. Carrying the name Exynos 4210, Samsung's 1GHz dual-core application processor is scheduled for production in March.

What Intel CEO Paul Otellini said would rejuvenate his company, Cisco CEO John Chambers thinks could kill everything in its path.

Intel seems very optimistic about its upcoming smartphone core, dubbed Medfield, but so far remains tight-lipped on possible partners or any further information besides saying that it is a "pretty exciting" time for them.

Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith reiterated that the chip giant will be a strong player in the fast-growing mobile device market despite early struggles. Intel, which provides microprocessors that run about 80% of the world's computers, has been slow to gain traction in the smartphone and tablet markets. Products based on ARM Holdings PLC (ARMH) architecture have dominated the industry, with the chips seen as much more power efficient than Intel processors.

The company didn't even come close to its 2010 mobile phone target of 140 million units, shipping only 116.7 million, which was down slightly from the previous year.

Intel has announced that the company is sampling its 32nm "Medfield" handset chip with customers. Scheduled for introduction this year, the Medfield chip will extend the performance benefits of Intel architecture into a low-power solution specifically designed for the smartphone market segment.

Nokia said Friday it will establish a broad strategic partnership with Microsoft, adopting Windows Phone as its main smartphone platform.

"The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable," said CEO Steven Elop in an internal email.

The profit gain was largely due to "a significantly improved performance in electronic devices, driven mainly by the return to profit of the LCD business and demand expansion in NAND flash memories," Toshiba said in a statement.

"In 2010 there was a big bounce in the semiconductor market marking a recovery year which has seen the industry overall grow about 15%," said Tim Score, ARM's CFO. "ARM grew about 30%, and this year we expect the industry to grow about 5% to 8%, and that we will grow faster."