Although some upstream supply chain players do not think notebook ODMs should join the entry-level tablet competition because of profitability concerns, it seems a neccessary step that ODM must take in order to stay competitive in the PC market.

Since Intel has opened up its fabs to other fabless IC firms, the Silicon Valley giant will pose a threat to TSMC at some point when it comes to high-volume orders, including future chip orders from Apple.

Taiwan is building its fourth nuclear power plant. The main island of Taiwan is only 36,193 square kilometers and already houses three nuclear power plants - two of them in New Taipei City in northern Taiwan and one located in Pintung County in the south...

When it comes to digital power, iWatt claims that it is the inventor of digital power control for AC/DC. The company notes that its technology allows its customers to eliminate BOM costs by reducing components while adding reliability and enabling smaller designs...

Samsung Electronics has reported record profits for the fourth quarter of 2012 because of strong sales from its mobile communications products, but it's a big contrast - yet no surprise - to hear the Korean giant (it is a giant in major ICT sectors - smartophones, semiconductor and LCD panels) describe how its panel business "struggled, as demand for IT panels for notebooks and monitors remained...

GaAs solar material maker Alta Devices boasts solar cells with an efficiency of 28.8%, but perhaps even more astonishing is the fact it can produce GaAs cells that are only 1-micron thick, which opens up the possibility of a whole new field of lightweight, flexible, mobile solar applications...

Vitesse Semiconductor has been a major player in the semiconductor industry for the past 28 years, from its role in the telecom area in the heyday of SONET/SDH to becoming involved in the Ethernet side of the business since the early 2000s...

Panasonic is shutting down its only dedicated plasma TV manufacturing plant in Shanghai, China, marking the total defeat of the technology by the LCD competition in the consumer market.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is expected to start making an integrated AP/GPU solution for Apple, using 20nm SoC process technology, according to Digitimes Research analyst Nobunaga Chai.

A recent Bloomberg report cited unnamed sources as saying that Apple and Qualcomm had been rebuffed in separate attempts to invest cash in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in a bid to secure exclusive access to smartphone chips. Digitimes Research analyst Nobunaga Chai has commented saying that he sees no good reason why TSMC should accept the investment.