Facebook has announced plans to acquire Instagram, a photo-sharing app for mobile devices, for approximately US$1 billion.

ARM said Tuesday that it would set up a joint venture with Gemalto, plus Giesecke & Devrient to develop secure software that could be used for mobile devices.

EV Group (EVG) announced that Himax Technologies has placed a repeat order for an IQ Aligner UV nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) system. The IQ Aligner will be used by Himax to support the company's capacity increase in the production of wafer-level cameras used in mobile phones, notebook computers and other consumer electronic devices.

"Why not be a foundry for all the mobile companies?" Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang told a group of reporters Wednesday evening. "There's no shame in that."

Intel is ready to start cranking out chips for tablets, but is the chipmaker moving fast enough to boost its presence in the mobile market?

STMicroelectronics should persuade Ericsson that they sell off their mobile chip joint venture ST-Ericsson, but probably to some aspiring Chinese company. That is likely to produce the quickest and most profitable - or least loss-making - exit for the two parent companies from what has become a failed project.

Patent holding company Pragmatus has filed an ITC compaint against six electronics vendors including Samsung and HTC.

Mobile World Congress attendees hoping to see the first smartphones with quad-core SnapDragon processors on board had better brace for disappointment. There won't be any, said Qualcomm VP of product management Raj Talluri, unless you count the concepts touted by phone vendors and chip suppliers.

Huawei plans to give contracts totalling US$6 billion to US mobile technology companies Qualcomm, Broadcom and Avago.

Intel's latest effort to crack the smartphone market revolves around its new ultra low-power Atom chip code named Medfield and Google's Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" mobile operating system, both of which reportedly appear in a new handset from Motorola that's due to be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress later this month.

Cisco came up with an interesting prediction in its latest forecast of global mobile data traffic: by the end of this year, there will be more Internet-connected mobile devices than people on Earth.

Apple confirmed Wednesday that it has acquired Israeli semiconductor company Anobit technologies for US$390 million, providing it with significant technological boost in the mobile devices market.

It's been a long time coming, but Intel has finally entered the mobile market - in China.

The Finnish handset giant scooped up Smarterphone, a small Norwegian company that has an operating system designed for more basic cell phones known in the industry as feature phones. The acquisition was disclosed by Smarterphone's Nordic investor parent, Ferd Capital. A Nokia representative confirmed the acquisition but declined to comment further on what it means for the company.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association has announced the availability of a new standard for wide I/O mobile DRAM: JESD229 wide I/O single data rRate (SDR).

Charging a mobile phone by simply using a solar charging panel on the back cover is possible but challenging, Nokia has concluded after ending a research project on the subject.

Nearly every mobile handset manufacturer is looking for one thing: A chip platform that can be used immediately as leverage in price negotiations in order to compete with industry leader Qualcomm. Renesas Mobile's Manfred Schlett insists the company is up to the task.

Google is working out any bugs in the latest update to the Android mobile operating system before releasing it broadly, and that's good news for Samsung Nexus S users.

Apple is well ahead of rivals in building brand loyalty among its users in a mobile market where the key brands are rushing to build as large a foothold as possible, a study by research firm GfK showed.

Nokia is to move its head office to London as part of the turnaround of the struggling Finnish firm.

Apple's move to standardize on Qualcomm baseband chips will be helpful in bringing LTE to the iPhone and iPad in 2012 thanks to Qualcomm's next-generation mobile device modem chips. The company announced recently that updated chips with integrated LTE and 3G support will offer greater power efficiency for mobile devices, a sticking point that has so far kept Apple from offering compatibility with high-speed LTE networks.

Renesas Mobile will initially deploy Imagination's technologies in its cellular platforms for high-performance smartphones, tablets and in-car infotainment, but the technology will also be used by Renesas Electronics in its SoC lineups for other consumer markets.

ARM has said that co-founder and President Tudor Brown will retire in May 2012 after helping turn the firm into a dominant mobile processor company.

3M has launched the Camcorder Projector CP45, a mini mobile projector and digital camera unit for shooting and sharing HD videos and photos.

Qualcomm has announced that its Snapdragon mobile processors power the first Nokia Lumia smartphones, the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 710.

The Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710 mark the begin of Nokia's fightback against Apple's iPhone and rivals using Google's Android software.

Luxury phone maker Vertu unveiled its first touchscreen mobile at an event in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday. The phone, called Constellation, will retail for EUR4,400 (Dh22,389) for the entry level model and go up to EUR10,900.

Yandex is taking its services to new screens by inking a deal with Samsung to preload access to Yandex on its line of connected TVs as well as its bada-powered feature phones distributed in Russia and other CIS states.

Since Android OEMs entered the scene, mobile displays have undergone a major transformation. Makers like HTC, Samsung, LG and Motorola have adopted the 4.3-inch display size as a standard, and some have released even larger devices.

Mobile display technology has come leaps and bounds over the last four years. Starting with the original iPhone, the finger-friendly capacitive touchscreen was introduced, which answered the woes of unwieldy styluses (styli?) and resistive touchscreens.

Cities could soon be looking after their citizens all by themselves thanks to an operating system designed for the metropolis.

GCT Semiconductor, a maker of mobile chips used in smartphones, wireless routers and other devices, plans to raise up to US$100 million in an initial public offering, according to documents filed on September 15.