A group of nine Nokia shareholders has published "Nokia Plan B", a manifesto "to challenge the company's strategy and partnership with Microsoft".

The company didn't even come close to its 2010 mobile phone target of 140 million units, shipping only 116.7 million, which was down slightly from the previous year.

Intel has announced that the company is sampling its 32nm "Medfield" handset chip with customers. Scheduled for introduction this year, the Medfield chip will extend the performance benefits of Intel architecture into a low-power solution specifically designed for the smartphone market segment.

At its current rate of growth, analysts see China replacing the US as the world's top economy in about a decade.

ProMOS has been negotiating with the Taiwan authorities and banks to improve its financial standing, a precondition for the firm to join the Elpida-Powerchip business integration.

Freescale Semiconductor has filed to go public on February 18, seeking to raise money to pay down its debt load.

The memory-chip industry will keep a lid on capital expenditures this year, helping avoid a repeat of the production glut that plagued the industry until 2010, Micron Technology CEO Steve Appleton said.

Nokia said Friday it will establish a broad strategic partnership with Microsoft, adopting Windows Phone as its main smartphone platform.

The International Monetary Fund has issued a report on a possible replacement for the dollar as the world's reserve currency. The goal is to have a reserve asset for central banks that better reflects the global economy since the dollar is vulnerable to swings in the domestic economy and changes in US policy.

The phones are built for people who use Facebook as their primary means of communication, according to INQ. The home screen comes with a feed for seeing friends' updates, pictures, videos and web pages.

In the last few years, mobile phones have become status symbols. Use a fancy one and people will think you're cool. Use a more traditional one and folks stare as though you just pulled up to the party in a Buick.

OCZ Technology, a provider of solid-state drives (SSD) for computing devices and systems, has signed an agreement with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) for asset-based financing of up to US$25 million.

The arrest of a Taiwanese general accused of spying for China is a warning to Taiwan to be wary of its old foe despite warming economic links that are likely to stay unscathed by the case.

The TI OMAP 5 offers quad-core computing at up to 2GHz with power consumption barely breaking into double-digit wattage figures. In terms of raw figures, that level of performance is very near that of current Intel and AMD desktop chips.

Talks with some suitors but Twitter's valuation at $8-10 billion.

TriQuint Semiconductor's (TQNT) fourth-quarter earnings more than doubled as revenue jumped by nearly one-third, but results still fell short of analysts' forecasts. "With the world transitioning to a mobile Internet, I expect a strong market and see another solid growth year for TriQuint in 2011," said company president and CEO Ralph Quinsey.

German exports rose 0.5% in December to round out a year of strong growth, increasing 18.5% in 2010, figures show.