The mail order smartphone business didn't work out so well for Google with its Nexus One. But that doesn't mean the idea of carrier independence can't succeed with an established direct sales leader.

"Things have changed quite a bit," says Robert Passaro, a senior product manager for BMW. "We're tapping into where people are living their digital lives now, and that's on the smartphone. It makes sense to leverage that and integrate it into the car."

"DRAM prices were previously expected to rebound from the second quarter of the year, but that may be brought forward to the first quarter," Kwon Oh-hyun said at an industry event.

Toshiba is hammering out a deal to outsource fabrication of advanced system chips to Globalfoundries, the Nikkei business daily reported, citing company sources.

The most recent topic is whether the iPhone 5 will incorporate a GSM/CDMA chip that would enable users to choose their carrier of choice. A source recently suggested that Apple had chosen Qualcomm over Infineon for that reason.

Officials with Micron Technology have said the company intends to break ground this year on a new 50,000-square-foot research facility at its main campus in Boise. At least half of the new building will be devoted to R&D of 300mm wafer microchips.

Western Digital again shipped more disk drives than Seagate in the fourth quarter of 2010, although Seagate's stronger enterprise presence allowed it to top WD in overall revenues.

PV system integrator MHH Solartechnik has signed a multiyear contract to sell Solar Frontier's next generation CIS modules to its German customers. Solartechnik will begin selling the modules in March, with the total volume of sales expected to exceed 100MW.

Samsung Electronics has announced that its new 4Gb-based 40nm-class DDR3 memory will be used in HP ProLiant G7 servers.

Germany's government and an industry group said Thursday they have agreed to trim solar power subsidies by up to 15 percent this year as demand thrives in the country, a leading producer and user of the renewable energy source.

Tilera, among the first in a growing number of processor makers looking to manufacture non-x86 chips for servers in cloud computing and other high-performance environments, is getting more support from a number of capital venture companies and tech vendors like Cisco Systems and Samsung.

The San Francisco-based bank said in a statement that such agreements "are a common first step in a business relationship involving a Chinese company," and that the partnership "could lead to the development and building of solar power projects."

The included video shows how you would "flick" apps from one screen to another and flip the phone to scroll, among other innovative and useful things.

China has apparently overtaken Japan as the world's second-largest economy, after data released on Jan. 20 showed double-digit growth for 2010. The growth effectively displaces its Asian neighbor from a global ranking it has held since 1968.

Apple has been criticized by Chinese green groups for lax corporate oversight of its suppliers in China, leading to poor environmental and work safety standards that poisoned dozens of factory workers.

The fab tool industry has undergone a sea of change...