A law.com article (registration required) cites lawyers as saying that the US government bestowed amnesty on Samsung in the LCD probe. In the unique world of criminal antitrust law, the first company to step up and admit a conspiracy receives a pass from prosecution.

Amid a downturn in DRAMs, Samsung Electronics remains the top supplier in the arena, according to the new rankings from Gartner. In terms of sales, Samsung was the world's largest DRAM maker in the third quarter of 2008, followed by in order Hynix, Elpida, Qimonda, Micron, Nanya, Powerchip and ProMOS, according to the rankings. Germany's Qimonda AG gained share and took fourth place, surpassing Micron. But Qimonda's fortunes could be short lived.

Samsung Electronics is considering cutting its supplier-vendor relationship with Circuit City Stores, the No. 2 electronics chain in the United States, after the retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from the court.

PRAM, known as perfect RAM, is the next-generation memory chip which features the advantages of NAND and NOR flash memories. Samsung will begin mass production of 65-nano 512MB PRAM in the first half of 2009 for the first time in the world.

Samsung Electronics withdrew its US$5.8 billion offer to acquire SanDisk, saying it no longer believed SanDisk was worth the money it was offering and that SanDisk's refusal to entertain friendly discussions stymied hopes for a deal. In a letter to SanDisk's top executives, Samsung Chief Executive Officer Lee Yoon-woo said SanDisk's third-quarter loss and the subsequent restructuring of its chipmaking deal with Toshiba Corp. "point to a considerable increase in your risk profile and a material deterioration in value."

Samsung Electronics believes that it needs steady growth strategy in order to narrow the gap with Nokia that takes 40% world market share. On contrary, LGE is seen to focus on enhancing fundamentals for mobile business, rather than unreasonable quantity expansion. The mobile phone market for next year is projected to see division in demand between premium and low price amid slow down in growth trend due to overall economic slow down. Recently, UBS lowered mobile phone market growth rate prediction for next year from 6% to 3%.

The Korean-based company will introduce on Tuesday new ultralight notebooks designed to appeal to potential buyers of Apple Inc's ground-breaking MacBook Air and smaller "netbook" models from the likes of Asustek Computer.

Samsung Electronics, the world's No. 1 maker of liquid crystal display (LCD) screens, said Monday it has been lowering its panel output by around 5% since August to cope with excess inventory amid lackluster demand from global markets.

SanDisk may have just concluded a multibillion-dollar patent licensing lawsuit with Samsung which could determine the future of both SanDisk and the flash industry at large. As SanDisk considers a US$5.8 billion takeover offer by the flash giant, private arbitration has given Sandisk rights to a technology that may well hold the future of flash memory.

The Supreme Court has refused to consider appeals from Samsung Electronics in a case against Rambus, a memory design and patent licensing company, closing a saga that began in 2005 over alleged patent infringement.

.."We are doubling the number of our R&D engineering staff from the existing figure of 2,000 to 4,000 within the next two years for our Noida facility," Zutshi said. The company is planning to put special emphasis on the LCD TV and Flat CRT TV segments as part of its growth strategy..

...India, with nearly 300 million mobile users, is the second-largest wireless market in the world after China, and has the potential for further huge growth as just over a quarter of its population have cellphones now. Operators are signing up 8-9 million users every month, and Gartner, a consultancy, expects 737 million connections by 2012.

Telecoms Korea confirms that LG and Samsung are researching Android, but it also says that the soonest we'll see Android handsets from either is the second half of 2009. That puts them nine months behind HTC.

The world's biggest flash memory chipmaker said it has recently begun shipping 16-gigabit multi-level cell (MLC) flash chips to clients using the 42nm level. Samsung's bigger Japanese rival Toshiba and Hynix Semiconductor are still using 43-nanometer and 48-nanometer technology, respectively.