Around the web
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Wall Street Journal
Plans by Trina Solar to build-out its next-generation cell technology, despite industry conditions have been secured with a structured term loan facility of up to US$100 million dollars with Standard Chartered Bank.
PV-Tech
Pay-as-you-go products may be synonymous with mobile phones but a solar energy service in Africa is harnessing the popular business model to bring affordable electricity to the continent's remotest communities.
San Francisco Chronicle
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.
PC World
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.
Ars Technica
US retail sales rose in January, but were dragged down by an unexpected decline in auto sales, according to government data released Tuesday. Overall retail sales were up 0.4% compared to December.
CNNMoney
Hynix Semiconductor jumped to an eight-month high in Seoul trading after Hyundai Securities said contract prices for DRAM chips increased and as financing delays at Japan's Elpida Memory raised the prospect of less competition.
Bloomberg
Atomic Precision Systems (APS), a little-known semiconductor equipment vendor specializing in deposition technology, has filed a patent infringement suit against Intel, IBM and Micron Technology claiming that they willfully infringed on an atomic layer deposition (ALD) patent held by APS, according to a statement issued by the company's law firm Tuesday.
EE Times
MagnaChip Semiconductor has announced its 0.35um mixed-signal process is in production for MEMS accelerometer applications.
Company release
Daily Telegraph (UK)
Samsung Electronics is considering spinning off its LCD operations into a separate company, it said Tuesday, in a bid to strengthen the competitiveness of the business, which has been mired in losses due to a supply glut.
The Wall Street Journal
Apple is working with component suppliers in Asia to test a new tablet computer with a smaller screen, people familiar with the situation said.
The Wall Street Journal (via Yahoo! Finance)
President Obama has a date with China's Vice President Xi Jinping on Valentine's Day, and despite tensions between the world's two largest economies, they're both likely to put on a happy face. Like it or not, the economic fates of both countries remain closely intertwined.
CNNMoney
Leaders from China and the European Union are holding a summit in Beijing set to focus on Europe's debt crisis, as the EU hopes for Chinese support.
BBC News
Company release
Marketwatch.com (Dow Jones)
Apple has filed a suit in San Diego federal court accusing Motorola of breaching its licensing agreement with Qualcomm over a chip used in the iPhone 4S.
ZDNet UK News
Chicago Tribune
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The Financial Times
WiLink 8, which plugs into TI's upcoming OMAP5 chipset, combines Wi-Fi 802.11n, GPS/Glonass, NFC, Bluetooth and FM onto a single small chip using a 45nm process, dramatically reducing the space and price of NFC technology.
PC Magazine
Micron Technology president Mark Adams said prices of computer memory have probably hit their lowest after a slump that caused losses at three of the four largest companies in the industry.
Bloomberg
Renewable energy companies are losing their allure with top executives after profits and stock prices collapsed across the industry, making it more difficult for boards to replace underperforming managers.
Bloomberg
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