A color version of Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-reader may come eventually, but it won't be soon. Speaking Tuesday at the online retailer's annual shareholder meeting in Seattle, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said that adding color to the Kindle's "electronic ink" display is a difficult technical challenge and that a color screen is "still a long way out." Bezos said he's seen things "in the laboratory" that are "still not ready for prime-time production."

Penguin books said on Wednesday it reached a deal with Amazon.com to again sell its new titles for Amazon's Kindle e-book reader in another step in book publishers' ongoing efforts to find profitable pricing models for e-books.

Aixtron and Veeco dominate what's known as the MOCVD market for LED applications and have been seeing strong demand amid increasing display sales for items such as TVs. But some investors have worried demand and bookings could soon weaken as the LED market sees excess supply.

ASML has announced that four TWINSCAN XT:1900Gi lithography systems have joined its "One Million Wafer Club" of scanners that have processed more than one million silicon wafers within 12 months, underlining the importance and acceptance of this advanced technology in mainstream chip manufacturing.

The first ASIC prototypes implemented in ST's 32LPH (low-power high-performance) process technology are expected early in 2011 with production ramp-up in the second half of 2011.

Trina Solar Limited announced today its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2010.

North Korea's ban on all ties could also bar South Korean aircraft from North Korean airspace, adding fuel cost and time to many international flights. Tensions on the peninsula are hitting the currency and stock markets of Asia's fourth-biggest economy.

Qualcomm has announced the opening of a new, multi-million dollar R&D center in Shanghai, which will focus on advancing chipset solutions to better address China's increasing need for high quality and affordable 3G handsets with customized features and time-to-market advantages.

South Korea's won fell the most in more than a year and the nation's stocks slumped following a report by a defector group that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il ordered the military to prepare for conflict.

Corning will introduce its new Corning G-2000 green laser at the Display Week 2010 conference, held by the Society for Information Display (SID), in Seattle, Washington, May 23-28. The G-2000 green laser demonstrates the industry's highest commercially available performance in optical power, efficiency, and bandwidth, the company said. As a result, it is well suited to meet the demands of the growing market for portable microprojection devices.

Spansion CEO John Kispert also said he could not confirm a recent Nikkei report indicating Texas Instruments was in final talks to buy two plants owned by Spansion Japan, as Spansion Japan is now a separate entity from Spansion.

We all know that for the absolute best throughput of storage available to us today, it's in solid-state-drives. The problem with SSDs is cost and the limited storage capacity in comparison to the magnetic solutions. But upcoming solutions from Seagate and Toshiba may be able to come up with something in between.

Many South Koreans joke they inhabit "the Republic of Samsung." But a one-time insider at the powerful Korean conglomerate has launched a scathing attack on his former employer, saying Korean politicians and media turn a blind-eye to the company's misdeeds.

The demand for medical instrumentation - combined with new and lower-cost transducers - means that analog-circuit design and interface for this market segment a growth area with lots of innovation and interesting work.

"As a result of this successful qualification, we currently expect to ship a significant number of tools to Epistar this year. We are excited that we have been chosen to support their volume capacity ramp in 2010...," said Bill Miller, senior VP, GM of Veeco's MOCVD Operations.

Civil aviation regulators from Taiwan and China have agreed to add 28 direct passenger flights a week between Taipei's Songshan Airport and Shanghai's Hongqiao International Airport in order to meet increasing demand for cross-straits flights, according to Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration. The new flights will begin operating before June 14.

Under the terms of the royalty bearing agreement, Qualcomm has granted CK Telecom a worldwide patent license to develop, manufacture and sell WCDMA and TD-SCDMA subscriber units and modem cards/modules.

But he declined to comment directly on market rumors that Intel could buy Infineon's wireless unit, which produces chips used in mobile network technology. "We have nothing we have to sell urgently..."