"I don't think Samsung would ever want to be No. 2 in any market," said Catherine Morse, the general counsel and director of public affairs at Samsung Austin Semiconductor.

MagnaChip Semiconductor has signed a wafer foundry agreement with Atmel, a major provider of microcontrollers and touch solutions.

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.

The Indian government has established a committee to identify technology and potential investors that could set up India's first two commercial semiconductor wafer fabs, the country's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said. The ministry put the rough cost of the two fabs at US$5 billion.

A trial over Rambus' antitrust lawsuit against Micron Technology and Hynix Semiconductor claiming US$4.3 billion in alleged damages was scheduled for June 7.

South Korea's LG Electronics has diversified chip suppliers for home appliance products to Hynix Semiconductor and Panasonic away from Toshiba after Japan's devastating earthquake last month.

ASML has said first-quarter orders fell 27% as clients took more time to place orders because of disruptions by the Japanese earthquake. The quake is hurting the business of some ASML clients.

Freescale Semiconductor has entered into a strategic alliance with Fuji Electric to collaborate on insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) technology and products for hybrid electric and electric vehicles (HEV and EV).

Last fall, industry analysts predicted there would be an oversupply of manufacturing capacity due to a market correction following the strong revenue posted in 2010, but following the earthquake, tsunami, and now nuclear crisis in Japan, the landscape looks different.

Dutch chip maker NXP is not in takeover talks, its chief executive said, although he would consider an offer like the one Texas Instruments made for National Semiconductor.

NXP Semiconductors is almost an US$8 billion market capitalization company, about twice the size of National Semiconductor. On the company's last earnings call, it predicted that 70 million NFC-enabled phones would ship in 2011 and 150 million next year. NXP is the chip that will power a majority of those phones.

Freescale Semiconductor won't reopen a seriously damaged chip factory in Sendai, northern Japan, the company said on April 6. The plant had been due to close at the end of 2011.

The worldwide semiconductor equipment market grew 143% in 2010 to nearly US$41 billion as the market recovered from the industry slowdown of the previous two years, according to Gartner.

Hynix Semiconductor has developed 2Gb DDR4 DRAM and DDR4 DRAM-based 2GB ECC-SODIMM applying its 30nm-class process technology. Hynix plans to start volume production of this high performance DDR4 product in the second half of 2012.

Renesas Electronics America will sell its semiconductor wafer fabrication facility in Roseville, California, to Telefunken Semiconductors. The sale price is approximately US$53 million, and the closing for the sale is planned for May 2, 2011. Telefunken also will enter into a supply agreement with Renesas for manufacturing services at the Roseville factory.

Firms across the world fear shortages of parts that used to be made in the Japanese factories now shuttered because of power and water shortages, or because of road and port closures, following the quake and the floods. And carmakers, whose products often contain some 20,000 individual parts, are expected to be among those worst hit.

Renesas is in talks to outsource production of auto microcontrollers to Globalfoundries Singapore, and some mobile phone semiconductor production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Shino Inokuma, a spokesman for Renesas, said by telephone.

David NK Wang, president and CEO of SMIC, has been elected to a two-year term on the board of directors of the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA).

Renesas's semiconductor plant in Yonezawa, Yamagata Pref., re-opened on March 19.

Renesas Electronics has confirmed that seven out of 22 of its factories in Japan has temporarily shut down production. Among these factories, Renesas Yamagata Semiconductor Tsuruoka Factory is currently beginning its startup procedures to restart its manufacturing.

The two Toshiba-SanDisk JV semiconductor manufacturing plants, Fab 3 and Fab 4, were down for a short period of time due to the earthquake and were back up and operational as of Friday morning, Pacific Time. SanDisk's current assessment is that there has been minimal immediate impact on wafer output due to the earthquake.

Korea-based chipmaker MagnaChip Semiconductor is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on March 11 under the symbol "MX."

Hynix Semiconductor will collaborate with engineers in Sematech's 3D Interconnect program at CNSE's Albany NanoTech Complex to address industry infrastructure and technology gaps in materials, equipment, integration and product-related issues for high-volume adoption of through-silicon-vias (TSV).

Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technology and Nanya Technology have asked a federal judge in California to delay a patent-infringement trial scheduled for May 2 over claims brought by Rambus.

On Semiconductor plans to invest more than US$30 million to expand capacity and capabilities at its 8-inch wafer manufacturing facility in Gresham, Oregon. The facility remains the company's most advanced wafer fab - with current production technologies down to 0.11-micron.

"Applied's solid first quarter was driven by continued strength in semiconductor systems and record profitability in solar," said Mike Splinter, company chairman and CEO. "We see momentum building in our end markets and expect our company's fiscal year revenue to be more than US$11 billion, exceeding our previous record by over a billion dollars."

Hynix Semiconductor said in a regulatory filing that it would spend KRW637 billion (US$567.7 million) by March to expand and upgrade its existing plant and conduct R&D.

Hans Stork joins ON Semiconductor after three years with Applied Materials as Group VP of the Si Systems Group and six years with Texas Instruments as the company's CTO and Senior VP of Si Technology Development.

Micron Technology has acquired Canon's interest in Tech Semiconductor Singapore for about US$121 million, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Micron also seems to be taking the lead in its joint venture with Intel.

Freescale Semiconductor has filed to go public on February 18, seeking to raise money to pay down its debt load.

TriQuint Semiconductor's (TQNT) fourth-quarter earnings more than doubled as revenue jumped by nearly one-third, but results still fell short of analysts' forecasts. "With the world transitioning to a mobile Internet, I expect a strong market and see another solid growth year for TriQuint in 2011," said company president and CEO Ralph Quinsey.

"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."

The recession caused fab tool vendors to de-accelerate their investments and programs in 450mm. As a result, 450mm production has been delayed at least to 2017 or 2018, said Trevor Yancey, an analyst with IC Insights.

The fab tool industry has undergone a sea of change...

As reported, Unity recently ousted its chief executive and the company is moving from a fab to an IP model, according to sources. Unity has reportedly been on the block. And a fab alliance with Fujitsu has reportedly fallen through.

The Certitude software enables engineers to raise the quality of verification environments and IP design components required to develop microcontroller unit solutions for automotive electronics applications.

Fairchild Semiconductor will be closing the 6-inch manufacturing line in its South Portland, Maine manufacturing facility and transferring production to its 8-inch fab in the same site. The restructuring is expected to eliminate approximately 120 jobs at the facility over a nine-month period.

The deal is the largest takeover yet by Qualcomm. It also comes on the heels of Intel's US$1.4 billion purchase in August of Infineon's wireless chip business, which competes with Atheros. Many industry analysts believe Qualcomm's takeover of Atheros is the first of several potential deals in the semiconductor industry this year.

Hynix Semiconductor said in a regulatory filing on January 6 that it plans 3.4 trillion won (US$3.03 billion) in facility investment in 2011.