She was previously the chief operating officer of Osram Opto Semiconductor. She joined them in 2008. She also had executive positions at Altis, AMD, among others.

ON Semiconductor has announced the completion of the acquisition of Sanyo Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Sanyo Electric, and other assets related to Sanyo Electric's semiconductor business.

As part of the strategy for transforming the system LSI business and securing an asset light business model, Toshiba has signed a MoU with Sony, expressing the intent to dissolve Nagasaki Semiconductor Manufacturing (NSM) and to transfer 300mm wafer fabrication lines there from Toshiba to Sony.

Elpida Memory intends to launch capital tie-up talks with Taiwan firms that are currently the world's sixth- and seventh-biggest DRAM chipmakers. Elpida president Yukio Sakamoto plans to visit Taiwan early next month (January 2011) to start the talks and hopes to reach a deal by the end of the company's fiscal year, according to sources.

Sony plans to buy back a Nagasaki semiconductor plant from Toshiba for about 50 billion yen (US$597.2 million) to double output capacity for image sensors used in smartphones and other devices, the Nikkei business daily reported recently.

"You used to have myriad semiconductor companies building fabs. Now they are expecting a couple of foundries to do it all for them," said Malcolm Penn, founder and principal analyst with Future Horizons.

IDC forecasts that worldwide semiconductor revenues will grow 9% on year in 2011, and will achieve a CAGR of 6% for the 2010-2015 forecast period. "Near term, the semiconductor market should hit bottom by the second quarter of next year and begin a growth cycle that will take us into the second half of 2012..."

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) plans to build one more "mega-fab" at a cost of up to NT$300 billion (US$10 billion). Construction of the fab, codenamed Fab 16, will start in 2014 probably at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP).

Intellectual Ventures has filed patent lawsuits against nine tech companies. The first lawsuit targets software security vendors Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro and Check Point. The second lawsuit targets DRAM and flash memory vendors Hynix and Elpida. The third names FPGA vendors Altera, Lattice and Microsemi, which recently acquired Actel and its FPGA business.

IBM seems to be shifting away from semiconductor manufacturing, and planning to rely on Samsung and GlobalFoundries as foundry suppliers. Both foundries are set to have wafer fabs for foundry operations in the US, which could help cement relations.

Tesla has incorporated Infineon's power semiconductors in its battery-powered Roadster, and is also testing them for its Model S, which is scheduled to begin production in 2012, according to Infineon spokesperson Christian Hoenicke.

STATS ChipPAC announced it has shipped over 100 million semiconductor packages with copper wire bond interconnect, and expects copper wire bond production volume to grow another 75% by the end of 2010 due to a rapidly growing customer base.

Applied Materials and Samsung Electronics have reached a settlement agreement that resolves potential civil claims and removes the risk of civil litigation between the parties relating to the alleged acquisition, misappropriation and misuse of Samsung's confidential semiconductor information in Korea.

Verigy has reported a profit for the August-October period, as higher sales of semiconductor test systems helped it come back from a loss a year earlier. The company's guidance fell short of Wall Street's expectations, however.

Micron and SanDisk are chief competitors of South Korean chip giants Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor in the memory-processor market.

The semiconductor sector of Abu Dhabi's economy is set to pump US$4 billion into the capital, creating up to 6,000 new employment positions in Abu Dhabi over the next decade, according to industry insiders.

"Capex will go up when our customers see the potential of the market. It will go down when it's not there. Every discussion we've had with customers indicates capex will not go down (next year)," ASML CFO Wennink said.

Toshiba will shut its No.2 plant in Yokkaichi, central Japan, by the end of December and phase out low-end chips used in products such as memory sticks. The company will also farm out production of so-called logic chips next year to cut costs at a business that's "barely breaking even."

TV panel chipmaker MStar Semiconductor plans to raise up to US$300 million in an IPO ahead of a listing in Taiwan slated for December, according to a person familiar with the deal.

The Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC) has announced it is extending its university research partnership to serve the needs of technology ecosystem in Abu Dhabi. Under the agreement SRC member companies will conduct research sponsored by the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), the parent of Globalfoundries.

"Overall, the SIA forecast for 2012 looks like the "death" of the semiconductor industry, and we couldn't disagree more!" said Bill McClean, president of IC Insights. In IC Insights opinion, 2012 has tremendous upside potential for the semiconductor industry.

Intel, Toshiba and Samsung Electronics will join hands to develop technologies that could more than halve semiconductor line widths to nearly 10 nanometers by 2016, the Nikkei daily reported.

ZTE, one of China's largest network equipment and phone suppliers, is set to buy US$3 billion worth of semiconductor components from five US technology vendors. It has signed the purchase agreements with Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Freescale Semiconductor, Altera and Broadcom.

TriQuint Semiconductor has announced record quarterly revenues for the quarter ended October 2, 2010. Net profits for the quarter soared to US$110.9 million from NT$22.5 million in the second quarter and NT$10.5 million in third-quarter 2009.

TriQuint Semiconductor Inc. on Tuesday hiked its estimates for third-quarter revenue and income, citing strong demand.

"Memory chip prices are expected to continue their downtrend even through the first half of next year, but they will likely bounce back from the middle of the second quarter," said Kwon Oh-hyun, president of Samsung's semiconductor division. Hynix CEO Kwon Oh-chul echoed his view, but said a price rebound may not start until the second half of 2011.

"Silicon shipments reflect the tremendous recovery experienced by the semiconductor industry this year," said Stanley Myers, president and CEO of SEMI. "While current data suggest that growth rates are moderating, we expect that the industry will continue to be positive for the next two years."

Suntech Power Holdings has struck deals with four companies: Azuray, Enphase, National Semiconductor and Tigo to enable "smart panel" solutions.

Samsung Electronics, Asia's biggest maker of semiconductors, flat screens and mobile phones, reported profit that missed analysts' estimates, fueling concern the global recovery in demand for electronics is stalling.

"We're considering various options of outsourcing as well as strengthening our own production capacity because of rising demand," a spokesperson for Sony said. The Nikkei English News recently reported that Sony plans to hire Fujitsu for the bulk of the production process for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor sensors used in digital cameras and camera phones.

"Although discussions are ongoing with Sony and Renesas Electronics to secure their continued access to our semiconductor packaging technology through a licensing relationship with us, these discussions have not sufficiently advanced, thus necessitating this lawsuit," said Henry Nothhaft, chairman and CEO of Tessera.

Software giant Oracle is keen to make more acquisitions to bolster its technology and a microchip company could be a good fit, according to company CEO Larry Ellison.

Freescale has prequalified all three densities of Spansion Multi-I/O SPI, 32-megabits (Mb), 64Mb and 128Mb devices with all three densities shipping in volume production today.

Japan's Sanyo Electric will close two of its domestic semiconductor plants by 2012, and move production to another plant along with about 1,000 workers, according to the Nikkei business daily.

LG Group said on September 17 it will not buy Hynix Semiconductor, dismissing market speculation that the group will join a bidding race for the purchase of a major stake in the memory chipmaker.

Over the years, ATREG has been involved in the sale of several fabs, including for clients Qimonda, Atmel, IDT, Freescale Semiconductor and others.

Disappointing sales forecasts from National Semiconductor and Texas Instruments triggered the sell-off. The letdown comes just two weeks after Intel warned its sales for July through September would fall below its earlier projections.

Analog chip vendor Texas Instruments has lowered the upper end of its forecast range for third-quarter profit and sales, indicating that semiconductor demand may be slipping as economic growth slows.

Globalfoundries and Freescale Semiconductor have jointly announced plans to bring a new class of thin film storage (TFS) flash memory products to market on 90nm technology.

Samsung has seen its semiconductor revenues rise at CAGR of 13.5% from 1999-2009, while Intel's sales have increased at a CAGR of just 3.4% in the same period. Extrapolating these growth rates, Samsung would pass Intel in semiconductor sales in 2014, according to IC Insights.