Two investment funds backed by the Chinese government are accelerating their purchases of stakes in major Japanese listed firms, with their total market value surging 10-fold to 1.5 trillion yen (US$18 billion) in less than two years, a recent study showed.

Nintendo says it will ship about 1.5 million units of its 3DS console in the first month after debut, promising to avoid the huge shortages seen with the launch of earlier versions, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told the Nikkei in an interview ahead of the February 26 release in Japan of the device.

Elpida plans to finalize the business integration talks by the end of this month by obtaining approval from Taiwan authorities and securing support from financial institutions in Taiwan, sources said. Rexchip Electronics would become a holding company with Powerchip and ProMOS under its umbrella.

The monetary authority has been limiting gains in the Taiwan dollar toward the close of trading almost every day since April.

Facebook has told investors in a US$2 billion fundraising that its stock-exchange listing could come as early as April 2012, setting the stage for one of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings in recent years.

Fairchild Semiconductor will be closing the 6-inch manufacturing line in its South Portland, Maine manufacturing facility and transferring production to its 8-inch fab in the same site. The restructuring is expected to eliminate approximately 120 jobs at the facility over a nine-month period.

The deal is the largest takeover yet by Qualcomm. It also comes on the heels of Intel's US$1.4 billion purchase in August of Infineon's wireless chip business, which competes with Atheros. Many industry analysts believe Qualcomm's takeover of Atheros is the first of several potential deals in the semiconductor industry this year.

A video of Motorola demonstrating the new device

Amid a slowdown in DRAM, Samsung Electronics is reducing its capital spending by 14% for 2011.

Motorola showcased three new smartphones. Each of the devices is a potential game changer, not necessarily because they're the latest and greatest in smartphones but more because the company seems to have listened to consumers about what the features, the tools and the specs they're looking for.

Hynix Semiconductor said in a regulatory filing on January 6 that it plans 3.4 trillion won (US$3.03 billion) in facility investment in 2011.

Ingenic-designed MIPS-based SoCs are, for example, built into Velocity Micro's Cruz Tablets. The connection represented by MIPS-Ingenic-Velocity Micro illustrates an emerging paradigm in the consumer electronics market: A China-developed processor is driving a host of new consumer devices, while a big ODM community based in greater China (i.e. Foxconn) designs and manufactures them, which are, then, promoted by US-based marketing companies like Velocity Micro, who cultivate channel connections with top retailers.

Interest in shares of Facebook is so strong that Goldman Sachs plans to stop soliciting interest from potential investors on Thursday, after the securities firm received orders worth several billion dollars.

Qualcomm Inc. agreed to buy Wi-Fi chip maker Atheros Communications Inc. for US$3.1 billion in cash as it aims to address growing demand for devices that use Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet.

The latest data from Germany's solar installations database recorded 340.5 megawatts of solar installs in October, a decline of 151 MW from the September level of 492 MW.