Intel plans to lay off by end-2013 an undisclosed but "relatively small" number of workers at both of its assembly plants in Malaysia, the US chip maker's regional spokesman said Monday.

Intel will take over a plant in Israel's Kiryat Gat city after it was shut down by the US microchip manufacturer Micron in a bid to save 800 jobs, it was announced Sunday.

The company formed a foundry business about three years ago, but until recently its customers have been tiny companies.

The construction of Intel's first wafer fab for processing 450mm diameter wafers is "well underway," having started in January 2013, an Intel spokesperson tells EE Times.

Intel, AMD and ARM are looking to address new workloads fueled by such trends as cloud computing, mobility, big data and social networks.

Intel has confirmed that it acquired last month Fujitsu Semiconductor Wireless Products, the Tempe, Ariz.-based subsidiary of Fujitsu that developed an advanced multimode LTE RF transceiver. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Desktops, notebooks, tablets: Just five years ago, those three words defined three distinct classes of products. But now consumers are being asked to choose among all-in-ones, two-in-ones, convertibles, mini-tablets, ultraportables, and phablets. With Intel's new "Bay Trail" Atom chip, due this fall, you can expect the market to diversify even more.

If Apple owned capacity at a fab, it would give the company the kind of control over both design and chip manufacturing that Intel has.

Eldar Murtazin, a Russian who is deemed to be pretty well connected in the mobile industry, has refuted rumors that Tizen has been delayed. He says that its "almost dead."