The growing influence of Brazil and China in the world economy received further recognition this week when the most commonly used benchmark for emerging-market stocks increased the weighting of companies in those nations.

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.

Consumers are changing buying patterns, placing a new emphasis on value and gravitating toward products that promise to improve their lifestyles, such as netbooks, portable navigation devices (PNDs), digital TVs, DVD recorders and video game consoles.

OCZ Technology has announced its collaboration with SandForce on its next-generation mainstream and enterprise solid state drives (SSD).

South Korea's Hyosung has withdrawn its bid for Hynix Semiconductor, throwing the future of the world's second-largest memory chipmaker into doubt again.

Applied Materials has announced it will cut 10% and 12% of its global workforce over the next 18 months, with half of the cuts in the US. Applied saw net income for its fiscal 2009 fourth quarter slip 40% on year.

China's National Bureau of Statistics says the country's latest economic data shows it is well on track to meet its target of 8% growth this year. The statisticians also see evidence in the data that Chinese consumers are starting to make more of a contribution to economic growth here.

"The problem for Applied and the problem for semi equipment in general is that it's highly unlikely that we're going back to 2007 capital spending levels..."

Solid state drive (SSD) controller start-up SandForce has closed US$21 million in series C funding. Led by new investor TransLink Capital, the round also included new investors UMC Capital, LSI, Red Maple Ventures, Darwin Ventures and A-Data Technology.

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.

Exports hit a one-year high of US$19.8 billion in October 2009, as a recovery in the world's economy boosted demand for Taiwanese-made electronics, according to Taiwan's Ministry of Finance.