Taiwan's economic performance ranking in the recently released IMD 2012 World Competitiveness Yearbook fell five notches from last year's place to 13th.

Reported heat issues with new iPad are most likely due to a combination of more backlights and more power needed to drive the backlights, an expert told CNET. This follows a CNET report attributing extra heat to the new iPad's A5X chip, also.

Japanese regulators approved a merger between the nation's two biggest stock exchanges, paving the way for the first tie-up of major bourses after US$32 billion of global deals failed since last February.

Shoppers in the eurozone loosened their purse-strings in May, but the trend remained sluggish, official statistics have shown.

Samsung topped the Indian smartphones market with 40.4 per cent share during the January-March quarter. Total smartphone sales touched 2.7 million units during the quarter.

Reuters reports that Amazon is expected to set up a digital bookstore in Brazil in the fourth quarter. It quotes an unnamed industry source as saying: "Brazil would be the first country Amazon enters only with digital (products) and that is because of the logistic and tax difficulties." I wrote to Badri Seshadri, co-founder of New Horizon Media (and earlier Cricinfo) asking if a similar - digital-only strategy - will work in India. He responded by saying it won't. He gave these reasons.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government won agreement on cuts to solar-power subsidies and plans to store greenhouse gases underground, breaking a deadlock that threatened to hold up the country's energy transition.

China, the biggest supplier of solar power panels, quadrupled a domestic installation goal for solar energy projects to 21GW by 2015 to help absorb the excess supply of panels and support prices.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) said it will hold off selling tablets based on ARM technology when the next version of Microsoft's Windows operating system debuts later this year.

Applied Materials has advanced the state of the art in etch technology with the launch of the Applied Centura Avatar dielectric etch system. This breakthrough system is designed to solve one of the most demanding challenges in creating the 3D memory architectures that deliver the high-density, terabit storage capability required for tomorrow's data-intensive mobile devices.

South Korean group Hanwha may buy insolvent German solar group Q-Cells, once the world's largest maker of solar cells, a spokesman for Hanwha Corp said on Friday.

Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has said it will delay the launch of its new phone operating system Blackberry 10 and is to cut 5,000 jobs.

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs, girding against a shortage of chips, said he wouldn't rule out owning a manufacturing plant or tapping the company's cash pile to ensure access to needed parts. Qualcomm is weighing different business arrangements with its suppliers and would consider "writing big checks," said Jacobs.

Amazon opened a lot of eyes when it introduced the Kindle Fire last year at $199. Many people expected it to come out at $249, but Amazon surprised everybody with $199. Now Google's done the same with its Asus-made Nexus 7, which, on paper anyway, offers the best specs for a 7-inch tablet at its price point, besting its closest competitors, the Kindle Fire and the 8GB Nook Tablet (you could also include the Samsung Tab 2 7.0 in this group, but it starts at $250).

Micron Technology will purchase failed DRAM manufacturer Elpida Memory Inc., The Nikkei reported early Friday. The acquisition price is estimated at 200 billion yen.