LG Electronics' net profit rose 7.6% in the first quarter, driven by solid demand for televisions and home appliances. Market analysts largely view the company's pullout from its smartphone business as improving its business and financial health in the long run despite a near-term revenue setback.

The global shortage of semiconductors that's plaguing automakers, data center owners and electronics manufacturers has turned into a "fight" that risks dragging on until 2023, according to the chief executive of Nokia.

Samsung Electronics beat analyst estimates for profit in the first quarter, but warned of continued fallout from semiconductor shortages as the global economy recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mitsubishi Motors will slash output by 16,000 units worldwide in May, the Japanese automaker said Friday, after a factory fire at key supplier Renesas Electronics squeezed the already tight global supply of automotive semiconductors.

Samsung Electronics might be shopping for an acquisition.

Samsung Electronics' Austin plant is expected to be fully normalized in June at the earliest.

According to cellphone location data analyzed by Nikkei, 14,000 people from among the Japanese company's business partners and other organizations participated in the recovery of Renesas Electronics, which resumed semiconductor production on April 17 at its Naka plant in Ibaraki Prefecture. The plant had been partially shut down because of a fire.

Samsung Electronics likely saw a 45% jump in profit for January-March on robust sales of smartphones, TVs and home appliances, though chip division earnings are seen tumbling after a storm suspended production at its US plant.

LG Electronics is leaving the smartphone market and plans to complete its exit by July 31. The deals are only going to intensify as that date approaches.

With chipmaker Renesas Electronics not expected to achieve a full recovery from its recent factory fire until mid-July, Japan's largest automakers have begun bracing for long-term disruptions and potential production cuts.

Samsung Electronics said on Tuesday that production at its US chip plant at Austin, Texas had returned to near-normal levels as of last week after more than a month of disruption that exacerbated a global chip capacity crunch.

Governments around the world are subsidizing the construction of semiconductor factories as a chip shortage hobbles the auto and electronics industries and highlights the world's singular dependence on Taiwan for vital supplies.

A fire at one of Renesas Electronics' semiconductor facilities will probably have a big impact on the supply of chips for the automobile industry, Chief Executive Officer Hidetoshi Shibata said during an online news conference Sunday.

Japan's Renesas Electronics halted production at one of its main plants in Hitachinaka, northeast of Tokyo, after a fire broke out, the chipmaker said late Friday.

Qualcomm is struggling to keep up with demand for its processor chips used in smartphones and gadgets, as a chip shortage that first hit the auto industry spreads across the electronics business, industry sources told Reuters.

Renesas Electronics' top executive warned that a global shortage of auto semiconductors may persist into the second half, joining other industry leaders in bracing for a chip crunch to snarl production of cars and gadgets well past the summer.

Worldwide electronics leader Foxconn Technology Group violated terms of its contract in Wisconsin, while local governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars to prepare for the project, a lawsuit filed by a real estate development company alleges.

Tata Electronics, Apple's contract manufacturer Pega簫tron, and Grasim and 25 other firms signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) worth over Rs 28,053 crore with the Tamil Nadu government on Tuesday. These MoUs would create 68,775 jobs in the state, the government said.

Qualcomm has decided to outsource production of its next-generation modem chip Snapdragon X65 and its sub-model X62 to the foundry department of Samsung Electronics, according to industry sources.

Japan's Renesas Electronics is fabricating more of its automotive semiconductors in-house as contract manufacturers are swamped with orders, Nikkei has learned.

Samsung Electronics has thus far been supplying 14nm chips produced using argon fluoride (ArF) photolithography to Tesla. Yet the two companies are expanding their cooperation to in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) products loaded with 5nm semiconductors.

Samsung Electronics is pouring US$116 billion into its next-generation chip business that includes fabricating silicon for external clients, betting it can finally close the gap on industry leader TSMC as soon as two years from now.

Samsung Electronics unveiled its latest Galaxy Note smartphone and new version of its foldable phone, the Z Fold 2, on Wednesday, hoping to regain ground against rivals Huawei and Apple as the smartphone market begins to recover from its COVID-19 slump.

A group of US senators last week proposed yet another bill to revive the domestic chip industry, the American Foundries Act of 2020 (AFA). This new bipartisan proposal is the second such measure in a month, following the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) act, introduced on June 10. The two initiatives highlight the effort by the US government to localize the electronics supply chain and rebuild the domestic semiconductor industry now that most of the world's production has shifted to Asia.

Samsung Electronics said on Friday that it has suspended its home appliance factory in the United States after two of its workers had tested positive for coronavirus.

Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn reported a 23.7% fall in profit in the last three months of 2019 on Monday as it braces for the impact from the coronavirus pandemic that has hit demand from key customers such as Apple.

India is planning to backstop its growing electronics sector by arranging to airlift components from China, three government officials said, as it tries to contain the fallout from the coronavirus crisis in China.

Vietnam will quarantine all arrivals from South Korea to guard against the new coronavirus, the Southeast Asian country said Friday, a policy move sure to hamstring the operations of South Korean corporate giants like Samsung Electronics that have a heavy presence in the nation.

Samsung Electronics may boost the production capacity of its CMOS image sensor by nearly 20% this year, analysts here said Sunday, as the South Korean tech giant tries to meet soaring demand.

A power failure at a Samsung Electronics factory disrupted production of semiconductors on Tuesday, industry sources said.

In late September, electronics distributor Avnet Inc. formed an alliance with e-commerce giant Alibaba Group to boost its online capabilities in China. E-commerce shopping sites such as Amazon and Alibaba, which sell electronic devices and components, are considered distribution's competitors. The announcement stirred up a lot of interest in the electronics industry.

Samsung Electronics has begun mass producing 250-gigabyte (GB) SATA solid state drive (SSD) that integrates the company's sixth-generation (1xx-layer) 256-gigabit (Gb) three-bit V-NAND for global PC OEMs.

Apple is about to start trial production of its popular AirPods wireless earphones in Vietnam as the company accelerates plans to diversify manufacturing of its consumer electronics lineup beyond China, Nikkei Asian Review has learned.

Global consumer electronics makers HP, Dell, Microsoft and Amazon are all looking to shift substantial production capacity out of China, joining a growing exodus that threatens to undermine the country's position as the world's powerhouse for tech gadgets.

Samsung Electronics is likely to say second-quarter profit more than halved when it reports preliminary earnings on Friday, data showed, as a drop in memory chip shipments to China's embattled Huawei exacerbated a price-squeezing supply glut.

"It was embarrassing. I pushed it through before it was ready," said Samsung Electronics CEO DJ Koh. "I do admit I missed something on the foldable phone, but we are in the process of recovery."

Nvidia Korea chief Yoo Eung-joon said that its production of advanced GPUs will be conducted by Samsung Electronics with its 7-nanometer extreme ultraviolet process.

American contract electronics manufacturer Flex - earlier called Flextronics - has stopped shipments to Huawei to comply with the US administration's decision to put the company on its trade blacklist.

It will be interesting to see whether Samsung Electronics will be able to win back Apple's orders and expand its foundry and non-memory businesses by strengthening its competitive edge in packaging.

Sony is closing its Beijing smartphone plant, a spokesman said on Thursday, as the Japanese electronics giant cuts costs in an attempt to make the money-losing handset business profitable from next year.