It won't be just Apple that might be interested in making a counter-offer. Google, whose Android smartphones are based on ARM, Samsung and TSMC could all benefit from an acquisition of the UK firm.

Gamers in Japan, home of Nintendo's Pokemon, are still impatiently awaiting the launch of the smash-hit Pokemon GO game but the government is already preparing for an invasion of little cartoon monsters, issuing a safety warning.

Son also briefly mentioned during the Japanese press conference that as soon as SoftBank announced the ARM acquisition deal, Son received a call from Alibaba's Jack Ma. "He was very enthusiastic. He told me that he is really interested in driving the China-ARM relationship."

After 17 months of investigation, the Fair Trade Commission of South Korea is set to fine Qualcomm up to KRW1 trillion (US$900 million) for abusing its patents.

Qualcomm's second-quarter results show the chipmaker is overcoming hurdles in China, while rival Intel faces fresh headwinds in servers -- the key to its profit.

Toshiba is planning to start the manufacturing of the world's first 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips in the third quarter of 2016 with Samsung Electronics being expected to release the same type of products in the following quarter.

Although based in Japan, Softbank is very much a Chinese company.

ARM founder Hermann Hauser said the result of the Softbank deal meant the "determination of what comes next for technology will not be decided in Britain any more, but in Japan".

It's buying an established titan that's well-placed for the Internet of things.

KLA-Tencor has introduced six advanced wafer defect inspection and review systems for leading-edge IC device manufacturing.

Applied Materials has announced its next-generation e-beam inspection system is delivering the highest resolution and image quality at the fastest throughput to leading foundry, logic, DRAM and 3D NAND customers as they move to advanced nodes.

SoftBank Group is nearing a deal to buy ARM Holdings for more than $32 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said, securing a slice of virtually every mobile computing gadget on the planet and future connected devices.

The world's second-largest economy grew by 6.7% in the three months to the end of June, compared with the same period a year earlier.

Shares of messaging app Line, popular in Japan, have surged by 50% in its Tokyo trading debut, making it the biggest technology listing of the year.

It is no secret that smartphone component manufacturing is slowing down, so is Samsung aiming for the next booming business, supplying batteries to electric vehicles?

The US government cannot force Microsoft to give authorities access to the firm's servers located in other countries, a court has ruled.

Infineon Technologies, Europe's biggest chipmaker by revenue, agreed to buy Cree's Wolfspeed Power unit for $850 million to expand in fast-growing markets such as electric cars, renewable energy and the Internet of Things.

Samsung is rumored to be in exclusive talks with Apple about OLED supply, and could be set to ship panels as soon as 2017. LG will presumably miss out on supplying OLED screens for 2017 iPhones, but could be in a position to join the supply chain for 2018.

After a strong 2H16, TSMC's growth could slow in 2017 (JPMe 4% sales growth), due to already 100% share in iPhone 7 and lack of further customer traction at 10nm, said JP Morgan analyst Gokul Hariharan.

LG Innotek is expected to exclusively supply dual camera module to Apple's iPhone 7 Plus, which will come out in September this year.

Nokia and Samsung have expanded their patent cross-licensing deal, leading Nokia to anticipate a significant boost to its licensing sales.