Abu Dhabi-backed foundry Globalfoundries is planning to spend US$2.5 billion to increase its 300mm wafer manufacturing capacity by 50% in 2010, according to Udo Nothelfer, company VP and general manager of Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany.

LCD panel maker LG Display will spend US$1.3 billion to raise output and help meet robust customer demand and is betting on booming premium LCD TV sales to drive strong growth this year.

Hynix Semiconductor has said it would invest 465 billion won (US$410 million) to expand and upgrade its production capacity and research and development.

Konica Minolta has decided to enhance its production capacity of glass substrates of hard disk drives (HDDs) by adding production line in response to a rapid growth in demand and the accelerated increase in storage density.

Abu Dhabi government-owned Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) plans to spend US$2-3 billion this year in capacity expansion as it eyes a larger share of the global contract chip industry.

We closed the year as planned with improved sales and strong bookings, as the semiconductor business recovers driven by technology and capacity buys from major Foundry customers and the memory market segments, according to ASML president and CEO Eric Meurice.

A recent research by SEMI indicates China is committed to narrow the gap between its IC production and consumption. "In addition to investments in the macro economy, the Chinese government also remains the biggest investor in the semiconductor industry in China..."

Hynix is slated to boost its production capacity of NAND flash memory at its 12-inch, Cheongju fab (M11) to 90,000 wafers per month in 2010 from the current level of 45,000 units, according to industry sources.

DuPont Apollo has announced the opening of its silicon based thin-film photovoltaic module manufacturing facility. The 538,000-square-feet facility will have an annual capacity of up to 50 megawatts with a thin-film-on-glass PV module production line. Full-scale commercial production is slated for the first quarter of 2010.

Suntech Power has announced that its first US manufacturing plant for the growing North American market would be located in the Greater Phoenix, Arizona area. The plant will have an initial production capacity of 30 megawatts (MW) and is expected to begin production in the third quarter of 2010.

Besides adding manufacturing capacity through ATIC's acquisition of Chartered and the construction of a new plant in New York, Globalfoundries is counting on advanced process technologies to help it win customers and compete with rivals like TSMC.

Intel will release a US$120 solid-state disk (SSD) drive positioned as a server "boot drive" with only 40GB of capacity, but the drive could also be used in low-end laptops PCs and netbooks.

As China primes its energy market for explosive growth, the country could see one gigawatt of solar power generation capacity by 2011, said a new report by GTM Research.

Eli Harari, founder, chairman and chief executive of SanDisk, made the predications during a keynote. He also warned that the NAND industry is at the "crossroads," as there is a "disconnect" between future capacity requirements and demand.

"During the boom, there were significant capacity increases. There were also, by the way, significant announcements of capacity that may or may not have happened..."

Toshiba has begun volume shipments of solid-state drives ranging up to 512GB in size. The drives are built on a 43nm manufacturing process using multi-level cell (MLC) technology.

OCZ Technology has confirmed it will release its Colossus solid-state drive (SSD) in the next couple of weeks, delivering the first 3.5-inch form factor SSD with 1TB of capacity.

Finnish operator Elisa and Nokia Siemens Networks have successfully demonstrated a new technology that allows operators to simply and cost effectively increase voice capacity of their 3G networks, potentially up to 100%.

"We are taking advantage of the company-wide vacation period starting in late December to achieve the cuts," a Hynix spokeswoman told Reuters. "We will reevaluate our decision early next year depending on the market situation."

"The bottom is yet to come," said Jae H. Lee, an analyst at Daiwa Securities. "Oversupply is a given fact until next year and chip companies will have to cut down capacity." "We currently see no reason to be invested in the memory sector," said Robert Lea, an analyst with UBS. "We believe the industry recovery has been pushed out to 2010."

Leading chip-equipment maker Applied Materials warned that profit in the current quarter would fall far short of Wall Street expectations due to the weakening global economy. The company also said on Wednesday it would slash 1,800 jobs, or 12 percent of its workforce, to generate annual savings of $400 million.