Novellus Systems posted quarterly results above expectations, helped by a surge in bookings and shipments. The chip-gear maker has reported net profits of US$63.3 million for the second quarter compared with losses of US$50 million a year ago.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion on Thursday posted a 20% increase in first-quarter profit, but sales and handset shipments fell below Wall Street's forecast.

Qualcomm has reported profits of US$774 million for the second quarter of its fiscal 2010, compared with losses of US$289 million a year ago. The company suggested it might fall short of Wall Street's expectations for the current quarter.

Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street powerhouse, has been accused of defrauding investors by America's financial regulator.

Research in Motion posted a fiscal fourth-quarter profit and revenue that missed Wall Street expectations, but the BlackBerry maker's forecast for the current quarter easily topped analysts' estimates.

Intel may look to acquire an FPGA supplier such as Xilinx or Altera in 2010 in an effort to expand its presence in the embedded market as well as SoCs, according to a Wall Street analyst.

Xilinx and Altera, which together control more than 85% of the programmable logic market, are poised to grow twice as fast as the broader semiconductor industry going forward, according to a Wall Street analyst.

ATMI, which provides specialty materials to semiconductor makers, saw revenues for third-quarter 2009 improve sequentially and beat Wall Street's expectations.

ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute), Taiwan's largest and one of the world's leading high-tech research and development institutions, accepted the 2009 Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award in Consumer Electronics Tuesday evening in San Francisco for its FleXpeaker, paper-thin flexible speaker technology, besting more than 500 companies including HP, Livescribe and Motorola. This breakthrough will allow consumer electronic products of the future to become even lighter and slimmer.

Software company Mentor Graphics has said it expects revenues and adjusted income in the third quarter to top Wall Street expectations.

As more banks raise money to repay bailout loans, that means big fees for Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.

US stocks started the new year with a big jump on Friday as investors looked beyond yet another piece of grim economic data on hopes that a recovery is on the horizon after a disastrous 2008. Markets shrugged off a report by the Institute for Supply Management that said US factory activity fell to a 28-year low in December, showing a more severe contraction than economists had expected.