Although more flash production capacity is coming online, SanDisk CEO Sanjay Mehrotra downplayed the risk that oversupply will hurt prices this year.

On Semiconductor plans to invest more than US$30 million to expand capacity and capabilities at its 8-inch wafer manufacturing facility in Gresham, Oregon. The facility remains the company's most advanced wafer fab - with current production technologies down to 0.11-micron.

Asian currencies were set for a weekly decline, led by the Taiwan dollar and South Korea's won, as an uprising in Libya pushed up oil prices and sapped demand for emerging-market assets.

Cheap sensors and network availability are not only making individual cars smarter, but they're also boosting the brainpower the environment cars drive in.

First Solar reported a 10% rise in fourth-quarter earnings, beating Wall Street estimates, but the company lowered the top end of its 2011 sales forecast and its shares fell 4.7% after hours.

"Applied's solid first quarter was driven by continued strength in semiconductor systems and record profitability in solar," said Mike Splinter, company chairman and CEO. "We see momentum building in our end markets and expect our company's fiscal year revenue to be more than US$11 billion, exceeding our previous record by over a billion dollars."

Considering these are the two most popular services for the Generation Y, on one of the most popular smartphones on the market, the new applications and upcoming features have been long awaited.

The processor used in the smartphones, the PXA920, was introduced by Marvell a year ago, and Marvell said it's the first single-chip offering for TD-SCDMA.

Oil prices climbed to their highest level in 30 months in London today as Libya's uprising reduced shipments and sparked fears of unrest spreading across the Middle East.

Hynix Semiconductor said in a regulatory filing that it would spend KRW637 billion (US$567.7 million) by March to expand and upgrade its existing plant and conduct R&D.

China's Huawei has won a preliminary injunction that blocks technology giant Motorola from transferring particular mobile phone networking technology to Nokia Siemens in a $1.2 billion deal that's been percolating for the better part of a year.

For years, Verizon customers were clamoring for the iPhone, but now that the phone is here, evidence is mounting that it's more of a dud than a hit.

"We have identified a technical issue with the Windows Phone update process that impacts a small number of phones," a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in a Feb. 23 email to eWEEK. "In response to this emerging issue, we have temporarily taken down the latest software update for Samsung phones in order to correct the issue."

Hans Stork joins ON Semiconductor after three years with Applied Materials as Group VP of the Si Systems Group and six years with Texas Instruments as the company's CTO and Senior VP of Si Technology Development.

"Recent data points have circulated in the past weeks suggesting OmniVision's BSI (backside illumination) yields have been adversely impacted out of TSMC, which could be backed-up on strong demand for general CMOS image sensors into smartphones and tablets," said analyst Doug Freedman of Gleacher & Co. in a new report.

Toshiba has developed a new flip-flop circuit using 40nm CMOS process that the company claims will reduce power consumption in mobile equipment. Measured data verifies that the power dissipation of the new flip-flop is up to 77% less than that of a conventional flip-flop and that it achieves a 24% reduction in total power consumption when applied to a wireless LAN chip.

Today FTC Chairman John Leibowitz wrote a letter to Rep. Ed Markey saying he would review the way Apple is marketing in-app purchases, in particular apps aimed at children.