The six-member commission has said it will not review an October finding by ITC judge Charles Bullock that Samsung didn't violate Spansion patent rights, according to a posting on the Washington-based agency's website.

Toshiba will outsource fabrication of system chips to South Korea's Samsung Electronics, freeing up resources for its memory chip operations, the Nikkei business daily has reported.

The upgrade reflects improving 2011 prospects for NAND flash memory demand, driven by tablets, smartphones and solid-state drives. The improving demand picture offsets concerns about higher supply due to new NAND fabs from Samsung, Toshiba and Micron expanding production in 2011.

Yonhap news agency quoted sources at the local government as saying Samsung plans to build the lines by 2016, but the spokesperson said details have yet to be decided.

We may doubt the prospects of the bada platform, but Samsung is one stubborn company and that could be a good thing after all. As a matter of fact, they said the plan to sell 5 million bada-powered devices this year is going just fine.

Samsung is a big beneficiary of Android's rise, selling more than 3 million Galaxy S phones, and capturing the mantle as leading Android handset provider in the U.S. by accounting for a third of all Android phones sold in the country.

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.

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.

NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top mobile carrier, is aggressively promoting rival smartphone offerings such as Samsung Electronics' Galaxy handset.

Samsung Electronics has said its new SSD with built-in hardware encryption provides the highest level of protection against unauthorized access to sensitive information on a lost or stolen laptop.

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

With this arrangement, Samsung Electronics gains access to Intellectual Ventures' patent portfolio, which includes IP in a variety of segments "critical" to Samsung's business operations.

Citigroup analyst Timothy Arcuri asserted in a research note that Samsung is pushing out US$750 million to US$1 billion of equipment orders targeted at DRAM capacity expansion. Lam is the company most exposed to the move, Arcuri said.

Engadget has published what it claims are photos of the unannounced, unreleased Nexus S Android handset from Samsung.

Samsung Electronics said that three million out of its seven million global Galaxy S smartphones shipments were made to the United States since it launched the phone here in July.

Samsung Electronics and LG Display, the world's top two flat-panel makers by shipments, received approval from the Chinese government to set up LCD manufacturing plants in the mainland, two people familiar with the matter said Friday, highlighting the next big wave for LCD makers, which had previously preferred to keep their technology at home.

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.

Rambus saw its results improve in the third quarter of 2010 thanks to a licensing deal signed earlier this year with former legal opponent Samsung Electronics. It is negotiating to renew deals with Toshiba and Renesas Electronics after their patent licenses expired.

South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics has announced that it is working on a new joint software platform for its televisions and mobile phones. This is seen as a way of pushing developers to create apps for its platform, thus indirectly increasing the number of people who would want to buy its devices.

The world's largest memory chipmaker is forecast to invest US$9.2 billion in its semiconductors business next year, according to an industry report.

"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.

Micron Technology has disclosed in an SEC filing that Samsung has agreed to pay the company US$275 million under a new 10-year patent cross-licensing agreement.