Hitachi said Monday nothing had been decided with respect to a tie-up with Taiwanese electronics manufacturing services firm Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, also known as Foxconn.

This agreement covers the use of Rambus patented innovations in a broad range of logic IC products offered by Renesas Electronics.

Sony has announced plans to invest approximately 100 billion yen (US$1.2 billion) over the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012, to double its production capacity for CCD and CMOS image sensors. The investment plan includes the transfer of a plant from Toshiba.

Intel was expected to be a capital spending and production partner in the Singapore fab. However, Intel "is not participating" in terms of capital spending in the Singapore fab, said Micron CEO Steve Appleton. Still, over time, analysts said that Micron will go it alone in NAND and without its partner, Intel.

A trio of posts this weekend point to a 2011 smartphone explosion, grudging admiration of Android, and a continuation of the trend of 2011: Android continuing extend its lead over the iPhone in terms of market share.

Hynix has completed development of a 30nm-class DRAM chip, with volume production slated for the first quarter of 2011, according to company CEO Kwon Oh-chul.

European flights are almost back to normal after air passengers spent the night at airports in Paris and Brussels because of the freezing weather that disrupted Christmas travel.

As part of the strategy for transforming the system LSI business and securing an asset light business model, Toshiba has signed a MoU with Sony, expressing the intent to dissolve Nagasaki Semiconductor Manufacturing (NSM) and to transfer 300mm wafer fabrication lines there from Toshiba to Sony.

Elpida Memory intends to launch capital tie-up talks with Taiwan firms that are currently the world's sixth- and seventh-biggest DRAM chipmakers. Elpida president Yukio Sakamoto plans to visit Taiwan early next month (January 2011) to start the talks and hopes to reach a deal by the end of the company's fiscal year, according to sources.

Sony Computer Entertainment chief Kaz Hirai has said that the next PSP could boast both a touch screen and conventional controls to give casual and hard-core gamers the opportunity to play titles in a way they prefer.

Dow Chemical plans to push its game-changing "solar shingle" technology, which installs on roofs like ordinary shingles but can generate electricity from sunlight, into commercial markets in 2011, which will bring the largest U.S. chemical manufacturer into an entirely new and lucrative market.

BYD's first plug-in car, the F3DM, has arrived in California where it will be used in a pilot project by the Los Angeles Housing Authority. The F3DM has 40-60 miles of electric range and 300 miles of gasoline range, and in a unique feature, drivers can specify whether the gas engine assists the electric motor.

China Unicom, which only sells iPhone handsets bundled with mobile service contracts at present, will sell the 8GB version of the iPhone 3GS with no contract for CNY3,999, said the spokesman for China United Network Communications.

The six-member commission has said it will not review an October finding by ITC judge Charles Bullock that Samsung didn't violate Spansion patent rights, according to a posting on the Washington-based agency's website.

Toshiba will outsource fabrication of system chips to South Korea's Samsung Electronics, freeing up resources for its memory chip operations, the Nikkei business daily has reported.

Sony plans to buy back a Nagasaki semiconductor plant from Toshiba for about 50 billion yen (US$597.2 million) to double output capacity for image sensors used in smartphones and other devices, the Nikkei business daily reported recently.