Semiconductor makers must take the lead in evolving the tools and business processes that allow the electronics industry to benefit from the efficiency improvements and risk reduction associated with truly collaborative supply chain management.

With the forecast for packaging improving in 2010, business strategy is shifting toward more partnerships and joint ventures. And the focus on through-silicon vias (TSVs) is rapidly accelerating and may result in even more partnerships and joint ventures between foundries and packaging houses.

Samsung Electronics has said it is considering absorbing its camera-making unit Samsung Digital Imaging. Samsung Digital Imaging currently develops and manufactures cameras, which are sold, distributed and marketed by Samsung.

Japan's Toshiba said on Thursday it has taken over Fujitsu's loss-making hard drive business as it seeks to eke out growth in notebook PC hard drives in a market dominated by bigger rivals.

Last October, Doug Grose was given a daunting task–turning the semiconductor manufacturing operations of AMD into a service that would also serve other chip designers. Now it looks like his job may effectively double.

T-Mobile and Orange are to merge their UK businesses, creating a mobile phone giant with 28.4 million customers. The deal between Orange-owner France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile UK will see a business with sales of 9.4bn euros (US$13.5 billion).

Toshiba is in talks with Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor and Globalfoundries about outsourcing production of some of its next-generation system chips to help cut costs, two company sources said.

The Nikkei reported that Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and NEC are in talks to infuse a total of about 200 billion yen into Renesas and NEC Electronics to help smooth the way toward a merger. The merger has been delayed for the second time.

When consolidation comes as the expense of innovation, the results can be toxic.

Japan's chip industry, awash in red ink, plans to consolidate older fabs. Fujitsu, NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology all detailed scheduled closings of older facilities. Also, executives at NEC and Toshiba, which have been discussing a merger of their system-on-chip (SoC) operations, appeared reluctant to go ahead with a merger until internal restructuring efforts take effect.

Infineon Technologies AG, Europe's second-largest chipmaker, would consider merging with another company although a partner may be hard to find because of the economic crisis, CEO Peter Bauer said.

Ailing Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory has said that it was in alliance talks with three Taiwanese firms but denied a report that they had reached an accord on merging their operations. The Nikkei economic daily reported Wednesday that Elpida had reached a basic agreement with the Taiwanese companies to integrate in a bid to survive amid falling demand for semiconductors.

Ideally, the four companies should come together as one,” Yukio Sakamoto, chief executive officer of Tokyo-based Elpida, said in an interview after confirming the discussions with Powerchip, Rexchip Electronics and ProMOS Technologies. He declined to elaborate on details of the negotiations.

Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said the global economy is in a deep slowdown and will not recover quickly, and the environment recalls 1929, the advent of the Great Depression. "Although things are starting to improve, this is going to be a long process," he said.