Japan is allocating about JPY600 billion (US$5.2 billion) of its fiscal 2021 supplementary budget to support advanced semiconductor manufacturers, Nikkei has learned.

The world is in a "race against time" with the Omicron coronavirus variant, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday, warning during a visit to Latvia that scientists and manufacturers will need weeks to fully understand the new variant.

The US has placed a dozen Chinese groups involved in quantum computing and other advanced technologies on an export blacklist, saying they pose a risk of gaining access to critical American technologies for the People's Liberation Army.

Xiaomi Corp. recorded its slowest pace of quarterly sales growth since early 2020 after supply chain mayhem choked off the flow of vital components and rivals like Apple Inc. eroded its market share.

The investment made by the South Korean group should help REC Silicon restart polysilicon production at its US factory in Moses Lake in 2023.

A consortium led by Alibaba Group has emerged as the frontrunner to take over Tsinghua Unigroup, a deal that could fetch more than CNY50 billion (US$7.8 billion) to help keep China's indebted chip champion afloat.

Plans by Korea's SK Hynix to overhaul a huge facility in China so it can make memory chips more efficiently are in jeopardy, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, because US officials do not want advanced equipment used in the process to enter into China.

Bringing simulation of real and virtual worlds to everything from self-driving vehicles to avatars to robotics to modeling the planet's climate, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang has introduced technologies to transform multitrillion-dollar industries.

The video conference meeting between the two leaders, which lasted more than three-and-a-half hours represented their most substantial discussion since Biden took office in January, and comes at a time of particularly high tension.

Amkor Technology has announced plans to build a state-of-the-art smart factory in Bac Ninh, Vietnam. The first phase of the new factory will focus on providing advanced SiP assembly and test solutions to the world's leading semiconductor and electronic manufacturing companies.

The Biden administration spurned a plan by Intel to increase production in China over security concerns, dealing a setback to an idea pitched as a fix for US chip shortages, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

The Japanese government said it will make an aggressive push to help domestic semiconductor companies expand globally, with a goal of increasing their annual revenue to more than JPY13 trillion (US$114 billion) by 2030.

Beijing is hunkering down after experiencing more Covid infections in the current cluster than at any time in the past 17 months, with officials asking for events and activities to be moved online.

That seems to be the message investors are sending as they push market indexes to new highs daily right after several technology companies warned supply-chain bottlenecks, labor shortages and delivery problems would crimp their holiday results. But investors might be missing something. Disappointing results from three key chip companies could mean cracks are forming around the bull narrative. And they may turn out to be the warning signs this upturn is nearing its end.

Every major semiconductor company has pledged to comply with a US request for information pertaining to the global chip shortage, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on the day of a deadline set by the government.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) on Monday said it has won Meta Platforms as a data center chip customer, sending AMD shares up more than 11% as it cemented some of its gains against Intel.

TSMC is struggling with its latest cutting-edge manufacturing technique, which shrinks the size of transistors on chips to 3 nanometers, a change that will allow Apple to include more powerful, less energy-hungry processors in its devices without dramatically increasing their size, according to two people briefed by TSMC on the project.

Yahoo has shut down access to its services in China, becoming the latest American tech company to exit the country.

Apple has cut back sharply on iPad production to allocate more components to the iPhone 13, multiple sources told Nikkei Asia, a sign the global chip supply crunch is hitting the company even harder than it previously indicated.

GlobalFoundries debuted on the Nasdaq this week, valued at over $25 billion, as it became increasingly evident that a global chip shortage could persist through 2023 or later.

SK Hynix, the world's second-largest memory chip maker, said on Friday it will acquire South Korea-based Key Foundry, a chip contract manufacturer, for 576 billion won ($492.41 million).

Sony Group on Thursday confirmed it is considering a plan to join with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in building a chip factory in the western Japanese prefecture of Kumamoto.

Facebook rose to prominence over the past two decades with some of the world's most recognizable branding: a big blue-and-white letter F. No longer. On Thursday, the social networking giant took an unmistakable step toward an overhaul, de-emphasizing Facebook's name and rebranding itself as Meta.

Total consolidated revenue was a quarterly record of KRW73.98 trillion (US$63.4 billion), a 10% increase from a year earlier, which was the previous high. Operating profit increased 26% from the previous quarter to KRW15.82 trillion, the second-highest ever, as favorable market conditions continued in the memory market while the foundry and display businesses achieved robust sales.

The global semiconductor chip shortage cost Volkswagen and Stellantis a combined 1.4 million vehicles in lost production in the third quarter, Europe's two biggest carmakers said on Thursday, though both reported some early signs of improvement.

Personal consumption slowed sharply, due in part to a drop in outlays for cars, Commerce Department data showed Thursday. That subtracted 2.39 percentage points from gross domestic product growth and drove the decline in goods spending in the period, as automakers had a tough time keeping dealer lots full.

Today at its inaugural Intel Innovation event, Intel returned to its developer roots, highlighting a renewed commitment to the community and a developer-first approach across software and hardware. Announcements spanning new products, developer tools and technologies underscore Intel's focus on empowering an open ecosystem, ensuring choice for developers to use the tools and environments they prefer, and building trust and partnership across cloud service providers, open source communities, startups and others.

SK Hynix is expected to acquire Key Foundry to strengthen its foundry business.

Few people could have predicted the downward spiral for Alibaba, when founder Jack Ma delivered a blunt criticism of China's financial system last October.

Intel's plans for a multibillion-dollar investment in a new US semiconductor plant hang in part on Congress moving on a stalled plan to bolster the domestic chip industry, the company's chief executive said.

BOE, CSOT and Samsung Display were all developing the OLED panel that Samsung Electronics plans to use on its Galaxy A73 smartphone launching next year, TheElec has learned.

Micron Technology said on Wednesday it is considering building a new memory factory in the United States but that state and federal subsidies will be needed to offset costs that are higher than its factories in Asia.

Micron Technology is planning to build a DRAM plant in Hiroshima prefecture, western Japan, for as much as JPY800 billion (US$6.98 billion), the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper reported Wednesday, without attribution.

For around a year now, Apple has been switching to its own M-family processors across the Mac range - starting with the M1-equipped Mac mini, MacBook Air and entry-level MacBook Pro in November 2020, and culminating most recently in the high-end MacBook Pros with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips announced last night. In the process the company has abandoned Intel's processors after 15 years of collaboration.

Chipmaker GlobalFoundries and major shareholder Mubadala Investment Co. plan to raise as much as $2.6 billion in a US initial public offering.

JP Morgan on Tuesday became the second brokerage in two weeks to cut its forecast for Apple's iPhone sales for the crucial holiday quarter as the global chip shortage and factory closures in Asia finally catch up to the technology giant.

Apple is likely to slash its projected iPhone 13 production targets for 2021 by as many as 10 million units as prolonged chip shortages hit its flagship product, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Samsung Electronics is likely to turn in its best quarterly profit in three years and a record revenue, on rising memory chip prices and brisk sales of its new foldable smartphones, analysts' estimates show.

In an exclusive interview with Time magazine, TSMC chairman Mark Liu said his team has to triangulate different data points to decipher which customers were truly in need and which were stockpiling.

GlobalFoundries plans to seek an initial public offering, according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.