Unlisted Dutch chip maker NXP expects a sequential sales drop of 8-14%in the fourth quarter as economies slow and consumer confidence declines. "The financial crisis and semiconductor market conditions have caused a rapid deterioration of demand towards the end of the third quarter especially in sectors like automotive and consumer," NXP chief executive Frans van Houten said in a statement on Tuesday.

Eastman Kodak said Tuesday that it entered a patent license agreement with Nokia, allowing access to each other's intellectual property portfolio. While specific financial terms were not disclosed, the license agreement is royalty-bearing to Kodak.

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."

SanDisk said it is still "open" to a Samsung buyout offer and hinted at more restructuring to come, as the largest supplier of retail flash memory cards reported a third-quarter 2008 net loss of US$155 million on Monday. The loss was significantly worse than the net income of US$85 million reported in the third quarter of 2007. SanDisk and other flash memory chip suppliers have been hit by a steep price decline in flash.

Yahoo is planning to announce major cost cutting measures including layoffs of more than 1000 staff as early as Tuesday (Oct 21) when the company is scheduled to report its quarterly earnings, according to people familiar with the matter.

Researchers have found a simple way to make high-performance electronic circuits from organic semiconductors. The advance, reported in this week's Nature, brings us one step closer to low-cost, bendable plastic electronics.

While at TechEd Brasil, at the start of this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer indicated that the company planned to unveil a range of new products by July 2009. Microsoft's CEO mentioned that, by the end of June 2009, the software giant would offer "client operating system releases."