Nokia will launch a digital music service in China, in a high-risk move to make inroads into the world's largest mobile phone market where sales have been crippled due to Internet piracy.

China-based Huawei is considering negotiating a "mitigation agreement" with the US government - as Alcatel of France did when it bought Lucent in 2006 - in order to show its willingness to co-operate with the US. It is making the lobbying push in preparation for a potential bid for a unit of Motorola.

Beceem Communications is planning to sell up to US$100 million in common shares in an initial public offering. The company said it is seeking a listing on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "BECM."

"Our checks in Asia suggest the bear case of competitive pressure on Cree likely takes longer to develop," he writes. "We note that many LED chip makers in Korea, Taiwan and Japan continue to out-source high-power LEDs from Cree, as their in-house yields on lighting-class LEDs are not sufficiently high." Zaman says that Cree and Nichia "continue to split the market for lighting-class LEDs for the near term."

Taiwan reported lower than expected March inflation earlier today and this solidifies Taiwan's position as a low inflation country in a region that is experiencing higher inflation that is prompting central banks to tighten monetary conditions. Malaysia and India have already hiked rates. Through increases in the required reserves and administrative measures, China's monetary conditions are not as accommodative as they had been.

A federal court threw the future of Internet regulations into doubt Tuesday with a far-reaching decision that went against the Federal Communications Commission and could even hamper the government's plans to expand broadband access in the United States.

In the NAND flash rankings for 2009, there is a surprise vendor on the list. According to Web-Feet Research, Samsung Electronics remained the leader in NAND flash in terms of share, followed in order by Toshiba and then SanDisk. SanDisk was ahead of Micron, Hynix and Intel.

Samsung Electronics has estimated first-quarter operating profits at 4.1-4.5 trillion won (US$4 billion), which might top its record of 4.2 trillion won for the third quarter of 2009. Samsung will explain the strong first quarter performance when it releases results at the end of this month.

"If the NDRC tells me I have to move to China or I'll close the China market to you, then I'll consider that," said TSMC chairman and CEO Morris Chang. NDRC refers to the National Development and Reform Commission, China's powerful economic planning agency.

Completing a merger transaction between the former NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology, the newly established Renesas Electronics has commenced business operations.

Toshiba plans to spend 15 billion yen (US$160 million) in 2010 to build a test production line for advanced flash memory chips, according to the Nikkei business daily. The NAND flash memory vendor has already ordered chip-making equipment from ASML to produce microchips with circuitry widths of less than 25 nanometres.

The unemployment rate across the 16-nation eurozone hit 10% in February 2010, the first time it has reached double figures since the euro was introduced.

Research in Motion posted a fiscal fourth-quarter profit and revenue that missed Wall Street expectations, but the BlackBerry maker's forecast for the current quarter easily topped analysts' estimates.