Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said the global economy is in a deep slowdown and will not recover quickly, and the environment recalls 1929, the advent of the Great Depression. "Although things are starting to improve, this is going to be a long process," he said.

Chinese leaders are alarmed at a sharp drop in economic growth, which fell to 9 percent in the most recent quarter. That is the highest for any major economy, but below last year's 11.9 percent and dangerously slow for a government that needs robust growth to satisfy a public that has come to expect steadily rising incomes. "The global financial crisis has had a considerable impact on China's export growth, which will continue to show weakness with recession in the US and Europe," ...

Citing the IC downturn, Gartner has cut its forecast for the semiconductor assembly and test services (SATS) market. In the current forecast, the SATS market is expected to grow 1.6 percent in 2008, but the sector will fall 4 percent in 2009.

Like all chip makers, Renesas (Tokyo) faces the possible impact of the current economic crisis and IC slowdown. Renesas has not publically lowered its sales and profit forecasts for fiscal 2008. But clearly, the current economic crisis in the United States and elsewhere could have a "severe effect" on the semiconductor industry, warned Katsuhiro Tsukamoto, president and chief operating officer at Renesas. "Consumer demand will drop," Tsukamoto told EE Times in an interview. Worldwide capital spending "will slow down."

Things were looking better for Qualcomm than they had in a long time. Demand for its technology has been strong, and it had finally settled a long-running royalty dispute with top mobile phone maker Nokia. But that was before the economy started really falling to pieces, dragging the wireless-chip maker down with it.

Taiwan's ex-President Chen Shui-bian, who faces corruption allegations, has been formally taken into custody. Chen, an independence activist and staunch critic of China, was taken to jail after his detention was approved by a court overnight.

First-generation TD-SCDMA is designed to offer top speeds of 384k bps which, if attained, would be as fast as a typical ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line) connection in China. However, the TD-SCDMA USIM cards issued so far have "128k" stamped on them, which points to lower speeds on the trial service.

Qualcomm’s fiscal fourth quarter results were boosted by payments from its recent deal with Nokia, but it was cautious about 2009, highlighting the pressure on the CDMA market and on handsets in general.

Leading vendors are diversifying their product lines, driving down operating costs and improving production efficiencies to mitigate ongoing problems in the mainstream DRAM industry. Manufacturers are putting renewed priority on developing more power-efficient parts. Meanwhile, DRAM manufacturers continue to push the process envelope to higher densities.

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.

For flat-panel makers, control over the supply of LED die appears to be a key strategic decision. But for a foundry company like TSMC, that argument is irrelevant. Any market entry for TSMC would only make sense if demand for LEDs with specific wavelengths and emission characteristics becomes huge. This could ultimately be the case in general lighting, where three or four individual chips might go into every solid-state lighting "bulb" for future domestic applications.

THine Electronics and Winbond Electronics has announced that the two companies agreed to transfer Winbond's Image Signal Processor (ISP) Business to THine. Winbond's ISP products are specially designed for high-end camera and mobile phones. Winbond will transfer assets including its intellectual property rights and ISP-related assets in fiscal year 2008, establishing a new company to transfer to THine.

Alvarion's Mobile WiMAX 4Motion solution will be used by Altitude to extend its coverage and provide voice and data services at 3.5 GHz to corporate, ISP and residential users in the Jura and Deux Sevres districts. The rollout of this commercial network is already underway, with plans to be completed in early 2009.

This option enables Motorola, within a specified time period, to enter into a pre-negotiated license agreement with Tessera and settle all outstanding litigation between the companies. If Motorola exercises the option and takes the license, it will pay royalties on all its products that include chips that use Tessera's technology and are sourced from companies who are not Tessera licensees. Detailed terms of the agreements including the time period, option fees, license fees and license royalties are confidential.

Taiwan announced measures to loosen loan and payment conditions on Monday to help the island's loss-making DRAM memory chip makers. Three major DRAM makers in Taiwan -- Powerchip, Nanya Technology and ProMOS -- are struggling with falling chip prices caused by oversupply. They have been in the red in the past several quarters.

Impacted by global financial meltdown, the major economic powers in Asia have witnessed remarkable outflow of foreign funds, and some of them have therefore experienced a sharp fall in their foreign exchange reserves. Taiwan's foreign exchange reserves suffered a slight drop of US$2.978 billion from a month earlier to US$278.152 billion as of the end of October.

SanDisk has been hurt by falling prices for NAND memory chips, a type of flash memory the company makes for consumer gadgets like music players and digital cameras. But a Goldman Sachs analyst said key intellectual property rights associated with the chips give the SanDisk more value than the market has recognized.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has published the report from the Eugene, Oregon, “2008 Tour of Homes” demonstration of LED residential downlights and undercabinet lights.

Foxconn's channel division has been given an ultimatum, turn profitable before the end of second-quarter 20Q2'09 or that's it. That is not a lot of time for Foxconn Channel to sort things out, especially as the division has been plagued by production delays and a whole host of other issues. Hopefully the current restructuring will help improve things.

Swiss chip maker STMicroelectronics has begun laying off workers at its Phoenix factory after a hoped-for sale of the plant never materialized. Spokesman Mike Michael Markowitz said about 100 of the plant's 850 workers were let go this week and that the process would continue. The company announced plans to close the 25-year-old plant last year and move those jobs to lower-cost facilities overseas.

Backed by a strong investor, Advanced Micro Devices is expected to expand its production lines and next foundry service providers such as Fab 36 and Fab 38 in Dresden, Germany. During a congress in Munich, Udo Nothelfer, VP, manufacturing and technology, for AMD's Fab 36, gave details on the company's strategy and road map. "AMD's expansion plans are based on the presumption that the trend in the IC industry toward fab-lite and fabless business models will create added demand for foundry services," said Nothelfer.

IBM has also bolstered parts of the shaky SOI supply-chain to propel its initial SOI foundry service in the market. But some wonder if the technology will gain traction amid the current IC slowdown and economic crisis. To fuel a new class of SOI designs, IBM will provide a 45-nm foundry service within its own fabs. As part of the plan, Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing will act as a "second source" foundry for IBM's 45-nm SOI offering. And ARM Holdings announced a physical IP library offering for IBM's SOI technology.