Formosa Plastics Group (FPG) founder Wang Yung-ching (王永慶), a local tycoon known for his business management abilities, has died at the age of 91 while on a business trip in the US, the group said yesterday. A legendary businessman in Taiwan Wang and his children have had a strong influence on the development of Taiwan's IT sector, with the family being involved in the development of companies including Nanya Technology, Inotera Memories, Nan Ya PCB, FIC, Fitel, VIA Technologies, HTC and Grace Semiconductor, among others.

Nokia expects global handset shipments will reach approximately 1.26 billion in 2008, up from approximately 1.14 billion in 2007.

Samsung Electronics believes that it needs steady growth strategy in order to narrow the gap with Nokia that takes 40% world market share. On contrary, LGE is seen to focus on enhancing fundamentals for mobile business, rather than unreasonable quantity expansion. The mobile phone market for next year is projected to see division in demand between premium and low price amid slow down in growth trend due to overall economic slow down. Recently, UBS lowered mobile phone market growth rate prediction for next year from 6% to 3%.

The chairman of the FCC has proposed opening up unused portions of the TV airwaves known as "white spaces" to deliver wireless broadband service. The proposal by FCC chief Kevin Martin appeals to public interest groups and companies including Google and Microsoft, which hope it will bring affordable high-speed Internet connections to more Americans. His plan could run into opposition from the nation's big TV broadcasters, which argue that the use of the fallow spectrum to deliver wireless Internet services could disrupt their signals.

A related supporting platform will also be developed, supporting HSUPA/HSDPA/W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS/EDGE (2G) mobile telephony standards. Development of the platform is targeted for completion by the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 (January–March 2010). The new G4 will be fabricated with 45nm process technology and will provide enhanced functionality and improved performance for applications handling HD video and 3-D graphics.

Last year, the ITC ruled that certain new models of 3G wireless handsets with Qualcomm chipsets could not be imported because they infringed on a Broadcom patent. An appellate court stayed the ban in September, pending appeal. On Tuesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the ITC's ruling about the patent's validity. However, it reversed the import ban because Broadcom filed a complaint only against Qualcomm. The ITC could not ban products made by "downstream manufacturers."

Despite a raft load of nifty new features, Apple's new MacBooks will have a hard time moving off store shelves during the economic crisis, industry analysts say.

..The company, whose customers include Intel, Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, sold 37 lithography machines in the third quarter at an average price of 16.0 million ($22.0 million), and received 31 new bookings. ASML forecast that it would sell 26 machines in the next quarter, which, along with the expected selling price of those units, was lower than Pacific Crest Securities analyst Weston Twigg had expected.

Apple has unveiled a new 24-inch LED Cinema Display which is Apple's first monitor with LED backlighting and supports the Display Port interface.

At a special press event held Tuesday, Apple introduced completely redesigned MacBooks and MacBook Pros with glass, multitouch trackpads, and Nvidia graphics.