Analysts say the Pacific discovery could challenge China's dominance, if recovering the minerals from the seabed proves commercially viable. At present, China produces 97% of the world's rare earth metals.

Judge E. James Gildea found that Apple infringes US Patent No. 6,658,146 directed to systems and methods for compressing images and US Patent No. 6,683,978 directed to image data formats, both of which belong to S3 Graphics. In the industry, that technology is known as S3 Texture Compression (S3TC).

GE Lighting has announced plans to submit a 60W-equivalent LED lamp to the US Department of Energy (DOE) Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize (L Prize) competition targeted at solid-state-lighting (SSL) replacements for inefficient legacy lights. GE has collaborated with Cree using the latter's TrueWhite Technology in a design that the companies believe will meet the decidedly-challenging L-Prize requirements.

Four years ago, Congress had the not-so-bright idea to tell Americans what kind of light bulbs they could buy.

ARM has said that within 18 months its Mali GPU will be able to match the power of Sony's Playstation 3 or Microsoft's Xbox 360, but that Moore's Law was not the only way to achieve that.

A 2006 long-term wafer supply deal between Suntech and MEMC has been ?？utually terminated' at a cost to Suntech of approximately US$212 million. Suntech said that the decision to cancel the wafer supply deal was due to ?？apid changes in the market for silicon wafers.' Suntech also announced that it was stopping investment in CSG Solar's research and development operations, which focused on crystalline silicon thin-film technology. MEMC remains a wafer supplier to Suntech under other supply agreements.

Silver Age, a British Virgin Islands company, owns 100 percent of Solar Silicon Valley Electronic Science and Technology Co., Ltd., which is a China-based solar wafer manufacturer. It is, in turn, 70 percent owned by Jinglong Group, a company controlled by JA Solar's chairman, Baofang Jin.

"In the past, the semiconductor market tended to be weaker in the first half and stronger in the second half, but for this year, it is likely to remain flat throughout the latter half..."

Japan's Ricoh plans to acquire Pentax as part of a push to get into the digital single-lens reflex camera market, it said Friday.

IBM has solved two related problems with phase-change memory and now says the fast next-generation data-storage technology will be ready for use in 2016 in servers.

"It is a bit surprising that we have not seen a more significant impact on our global IT spending forecast as a results of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, but despite widespread concerns about disruptions to the supply of critical components in the initial aftermath of the natural disaster, there has not been a dramatic impact on overall IT spending," said Richard Gordon, research VP at Gartner.

Samsung Electronics Co. said on Friday that it will fold its flat-panel display business back into its semiconductor business, uniting its component manufacturing operations just when the display business appears likely to be unprofitable for some time to come.

It's been barely a fortnight since UK customers started receiving their pre-orders for Sony's flagship HX923 series of Bravia LED-backlit LCD TVs, but now the Japanese manufacturer has issued a recall on all existing display models and boxed units from Sony Centres and independent dealers, following complaints from KDL-46HX923 and KDL-55HX923 owners about a physical defect on the LCD screen.

In early June, Gestamp Asetym Solar revealed that it would be working with French automaker Renault to install a solar system on the automakers manufacturing plants in France. The companies recently advised that they had chosen Trina Solar as the PV module supplier for the project. Through its subsidiary, Trina Solar Spain, the company signed a sales agreement with Gestamp, but neither company disclosed any of the financial details for the deal.

Two of potentially the largest utility-scale PV projects so far planned in China will be supplied modules by Yingli Green Energy. A module supply agreement has been signed with Huanghe Hydropower Development Co for the supply of a total of 110 MW of PV modules for two ground mounted plants to be built in Wulan, Qinghai province and Golmud, Qinghai province. Yingli said the modules are expected to be delivered from June through August of this year.

Australia's renewable energy sector has reassured consumers about the safety of household solar power systems after NSW Government released a statement yesterday discussing the results of an audit conducted by the Office of Fair Trading.

The DOE is working with utilities and local governments to streamline U.S. solar permitting - a 'new frontier for solar cost decline,' says advocacy group

The U.S. Energy Department said it is offering to guarantee about $4.5 billion in loans for First Solar Inc. to finance three renewable energy projects in California that the solar-panel maker is developing.

Taiwanese prosecutors have indicted former president Lee Teng-hui, the state's first democratically elected leader, on corruption charges.

TI's Miho and Aizu sites and its Tokyo offices were affected by the initial magnitude 8.9 earthquake. Initial production lines at Miho resumed in mid-April, and full production will resume in third quarter. TI's fab in Aizu has returned to full production.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) has announced that its chairman died. But shareholders rejected CEO David Wang's reappointment as a board director, and the company requested its shares be suspended from trading in Hong Kong pending the release of "price- sensitive" information.

Shares of Taiwan's HTC are up more than 15% this year as the company cashes in on Android. Investors might be wise to seek out international funds that own the stock.

An uncontrolled renewable power expansion in Germany could threaten the stability of energy grids, the head of energy agency Dena told Reuters on Wednesday.

Hitachi Ltd is in talks with Toshiba and Sony about joining the merger of their liquid-crystal display (LCD) units, a move that would create the world's largest maker of small panels, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday.

Mouser Electronics announced a partnership agreement with LEDiL, a leader in innovative LED lighting optics for high-power and lighting-class LEDs.

After two quarters of declining shipments, photovoltaic module manufacturers are set to see strongly recovering demand through the second half of 2011.