"2011 started strong, with customer demand in January and February tracking our expectations for a first quarter of above-seasonal growth," said Rich Templeton, TI CEO. "But the Japan earthquake that's taken such a heartbreaking human toll in the country also disrupted local demand starting in mid-March and impaired operations at two of our factories there."

Intel and Micron Technology will make an announcement about NAND flash on April 14. The companies have not disclosed the details. "I believe that they will announce the finalization of their Singapore agreement-IMFS-that will bring up 25nm first and then 20nm later," said Alan Niebel, CEO of Web-Feet Research.

Dutch chip maker NXP is not in takeover talks, its chief executive said, although he would consider an offer like the one Texas Instruments made for National Semiconductor.

Hynix CEO OC Kwon said that Hynix had around 45 days of wafer inventory and was reassured by quake-hit Japanese raw materials firms that there wouldn't be any major disruptions in wafer supplies.

David NK Wang, president and CEO of SMIC, has been elected to a two-year term on the board of directors of the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA).

But the app selling experience, especially for MLB and other premium publishers, is still much better at Apple's iOS App Store than Google's Android Market.

If true, this report confirms the February statement of Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who said Microsoft has paid Nokia an "incredible" amount of money for the smartphone deal.

Although more flash production capacity is coming online, SanDisk CEO Sanjay Mehrotra downplayed the risk that oversupply will hurt prices this year.

"Applied's solid first quarter was driven by continued strength in semiconductor systems and record profitability in solar," said Mike Splinter, company chairman and CEO. "We see momentum building in our end markets and expect our company's fiscal year revenue to be more than US$11 billion, exceeding our previous record by over a billion dollars."

"Leading-edge capacity excess, driven by Globalfoundries' expansion primarily, means pricing is going to come down," said Intel CEO Paul Otellini. "As leading-edge pricing comes down, so does the trailing-edge [pricing], hollowing out the business. That means real trouble for Globalfoundries and TSMC over the next few years." He conceded that Samsung was a different case with its memory and logic operations.

What Intel CEO Paul Otellini said would rejuvenate his company, Cisco CEO John Chambers thinks could kill everything in its path.

"We are excited to complete the transition to the next generation 2Xnm NAND components which reiterates our strategy of producing high performance SSDs at the most attractive price point available for consumer applications," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology.

The memory-chip industry will keep a lid on capital expenditures this year, helping avoid a repeat of the production glut that plagued the industry until 2010, Micron Technology CEO Steve Appleton said.

TriQuint Semiconductor's (TQNT) fourth-quarter earnings more than doubled as revenue jumped by nearly one-third, but results still fell short of analysts' forecasts. "With the world transitioning to a mobile Internet, I expect a strong market and see another solid growth year for TriQuint in 2011," said company president and CEO Ralph Quinsey.

"The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable," said CEO Steven Elop in an internal email.

"There are certainly server applications today for which ... a lack of 64-bit is not a barrier..."

AUO CEO LJ Chen will be allowed to travel outside the US for the first time since criminal price-fixing charges restricted his movements. While in Taiwan Chen will not be allowed to meet with any of his co-defendants, some of whom may be there at the same time.

Steve Jobs said in an email to all Apple employees that the board of directors has granted him a medical leave of absence. Jobs will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company. COO Tim Cook will be responsible for all of Apple's day to day operations.

Intel was expected to be a capital spending and production partner in the Singapore fab. However, Intel "is not participating" in terms of capital spending in the Singapore fab, said Micron CEO Steve Appleton. Still, over time, analysts said that Micron will go it alone in NAND and without its partner, Intel.

Hynix has completed development of a 30nm-class DRAM chip, with volume production slated for the first quarter of 2011, according to company CEO Kwon Oh-chul.

"Chip prices remained strong until the first half of this year, but they dropped sharply, especially during the fourth quarter," CEO OC Kwon said in a recent interview. "Due to the sharper-than-expected fall, a considerable decline in both our sales and profit is inevitable in the fourth quarter."

Broadcom now expects fourth-quarter revenues to reach about US$1.9 billion, the top end of its previous forecast range. "Our increased revenue guidance reflects stronger-than-expected demand for products in our Mobile and Wireless markets versus our initial expectations entering the quarter," said company president and CEO Scott McGregor.

Did TIME cave in to political pressure? I neither know nor care. What I do know is that this year's choice is simply ludicrous.

Everybody knows BlackBerry OS 6 is a stopgap. It's a way to keep the business going (and keep enterprise customers attached to their BlackBerry Enterprise Servers) while RIM works on the world-beating next big thing, which seems to involve a QNX core, TAT interface, Torch Mobile Web browser, and dual-core processors.

Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha revealed today that the cellphone manufacturer would be coming to market with tablets in the near future, in both 7- and 10-inch screen sizes.

For 2011, the fab tool growth will be driven by foundry and NAND to offset a "pause in DRAM" ...

If you're waiting for the first LTE smartphone on Verizon Wireless to arrive, Verizon's CEO says it'll happen in February 2011