China's state-backed semiconductor fund is near to closing a CNY120 billion ($18.98 billion) investment round for a second fund to support the domestic chip sector and help cut reliance on imports amid a bruising trade standoff with the United States.

Sharp earned a net profit of JPY70.2 billion (US$642 million) for the year ended last month, it said Thursday, as robust profits from LCDs helped break a three-year run of losses despite weak orders related to Apple's iPhone X. The Osaka-based electronics maker booked a net loss of JPY24.8 billion a year earlier.

Kim Jong-un has become the first North Korean leader to set foot in South Korea by crossing the military line that has divided the peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953. In a moment rich with symbolism and pomp, South Korean leader Moon Jae-in and Mr Kim shook hands at the border.

Qualcomm accumulated a $125m legal bill in the three months to March and the chipmaker warned its costs would rise further in the coming months, as it prepares for a number of courtroom battles against Apple and US regulators.

Apple could make a major change to the way it names successive iPhone generations this year, Guggenheim analyst Robert Cihra suggests, tipping Apple to take the opportunity to simplify what the iPhones are called when the new models launch this fall.

The US Justice Department has joined two other agencies probing Huawei Technologies Co for possible violations of sanctions banning sales to Iran, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The US government's move last week to bar ZTE from buying American technology looks set to not only cripple the Chinese smartphone maker, but reverberate through the global telecommunications supply chain as well.

Shares of Apple dropped nearly 2% on Tuesday as investors worries intensified about soft demand for iPhones after a warning from a company that supplies components for smartphones.

Chipmaker AMS reported first-quarter sales toward the lower end of its guidance range on Monday and warned of a downturn owing to weaker orders from one of its main customers.

Dialog Semiconductor expects Apple, its top customer, to use its chips for a significant proportion of its devices in 2019 and 2020, Chief Executive Jalal Bagherli told a German newspaper.

Qualcomm Inc reapplied for approval from China's Ministry of Commerce for its acquisition of NXP Semiconductors NV, which demanded a July deadline for closing the deal as regulators required additional concessions to give it approval.

Nvidia may not be talking about its GeForce Partner Program, but AMD has gone from silent to proactive in less than 24 hours. Hours ago Scott Herkelman, Corporate VP and General Manager of AMD Radeon Gaming, addressed AMD resellers via Twitter, not only acknowledging the anti-competitive tactics Nvidia has leveraged against them, but inviting others to share their stories.

Flipkart announces strategic partnership with Asus, will launch Zenfone Max Pro on April 23 Flipkart will now be the primary sales channel for Asus smartphones and under the three-year partnership, the company will announce the Asus Zenfone Max Pro.

The company signed the preliminary agreement with South Chungcheong Province to invest some KRW480 billion (US$449 million) for the expansion of its plant in Cheonan, some 80 kilometers south of Seoul, for 300mm silicon wafer, the provincial government said.

Though Qualcomm first evaluated non-headcount expense reductions, it concluded that a workforce reduction is needed to support long-term growth and success, a company spokesperson said.

Facebook is building a team to design its own semiconductors, adding to a trend among technology companies to supply themselves and lower their dependence on chipmakers such as Intel and Qualcomm.

As a result, without any products to sell and missing the crucial 5G transition revolution, we expect ZTE, a publicly traded company on the Hong-Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, to file for bankruptcy in the next few weeks.

China's economy grew at an annual pace of 6.8% in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, according to official data, beating forecasts for the period. The growth figures for January to March were also above Beijing's 2018 annual growth target of "around 6.5%".

Apple is set to start the production of the OLED screens for 2018's new iPhones next month. This will see Tim Cook continue his strategy of sacrificing market share and sales numbers to maintain higher margins and more expensive iOS-powered smartphones.

Samsung Electronics can continue manufacturing and selling smartphones in China while it battles Huawei Technologies over patent royalties, a US judge has ruled. The order by a federal judge in San Francisco blocks Huawei from enforcing a decision by a Chinese court, which ruled Samsung is infringing two Huawei patents.

China's Alibaba Group has been testing its own autonomous vehicle technology, the South China Morning Post reports, and is looking to hire an additional 50 self-driving vehicle experts. Alibaba's rivals Baidu and Tencent have also been working on autonomous technology.

Tesla is temporarily stopping production of its Model 3 electric car, amid a long waiting list and several missed targets. The company, however, says the shutdown is intended to resolve some of the problems that have contributed to the numerous delays in getting the cars to hundreds of thousands of reservation holders.

The Commerce Department on Monday barred US companies from exporting to Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE for seven years, saying the company had violated a previous settlement of criminal and civil charges for making illegal shipments to Iran and North Korea.

China is slowing reviews of multibillion-dollar takeover deals being pursued by Qualcomm and Bain Capital, people familiar with the matter say, as US-China trade tensions escalate.

7nm+ design libraries are not available yet, and thus design engineers at Apple, Nvidia or Qualcomm (to mention a few) are not expected to have a holistic (to borrow the terminology from ASML) view on cost/ benefits of 7nm+ with EUV.

US President Donald Trump has said he will only join the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) if the deal is "substantially better" than the one offered to President Barack Obama. The TPP is the free trade pact with primarily Asia-Pacific nations that Trump backed out of last year.

Computer scientists are contemplating their own "A-Bomb moment." Facebook's carelessness with user data, and attacks the company has enabled against western democracies, are on software engineers' consciences.

Global foundries and Toppan Photomasks have announced a multi-year extension to their Advanced Mask Technology Center (AMTC) joint venture in Dresden, Germany.

Paul Jacobs, the ousted chairman of Qualcomm, is making progress in lining up enough funding to offer to take the chipmaker private, and could make the bid within a few months, according to a person familiar with his plans.

Qualcomm's vision intelligence platform features the company's first family of system-on-chips (SoCs) purpose-built for the Internet of Things (IoT) using 10nm FinFET process technology.

Nvidia cracked the list of top 10 semiconductor vendors by sales for the first time in 2017, joining Qualcomm as the only other strictly fabless chip supplier to attain that distinction last year, according to market research firm IHS Markit.

Samsung is producing ASIC chips for upstart mining hardware manufacturer Halong Mining, at least according to one mining rig distributor.

Google is teaming up with the American Medical Association, a physician lobbying group, on a plan to get start-ups to come up with the "best new ideas for fostering data sharing from health monitoring devices."

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told USA TODAY he's leaving Facebook out of growing concern for the carelessness with which Facebook and other Internet companies treat the private information of users.

Intel has decided to kill the Intel Remote Keyboard app for Android and iOS devices in order to protect user devices from three vulnerabilities - one of which was classified as "critical". The chip maker has also issued a Product Discontinuation notice to recommend users to uninstall the app from their devices. The app was notably launched by the company in 2015 to let users wirelessly control their Intel NUC (next unit of computing) and Intel Compute Stick computers and transform their smartphones or tablets into a virtual keyboard and mouse.

Bitmain has announced the Antminer E3, which is an ASIC miner engineered for mining Ethereum.

Intel introduced new 8th Gen Intel Core vPro processors, the Intel Core processor family and Intel Xeon E-2100M processors designed for mobile workstations. Engineered to help make digital transformation real, organizations of all sizes can upgrade their fleets with these latest processors to optimize productivity with Windows 10 and help protect company assets, while also managing costs.

At a global event in Beijing, Intel unveiled the first ever Intel Core i9 processor for laptops. Part of the new lineup of high-performance mobile products unveiled, the powerful 8th Gen Intel Core i9 processor is the highest-performance laptop processor Intel has ever built to deliver the best gaming and content creation experience on the go.