Broadcom now expects fourth-quarter revenues to reach about US$1.9 billion, the top end of its previous forecast range. "Our increased revenue guidance reflects stronger-than-expected demand for products in our Mobile and Wireless markets versus our initial expectations entering the quarter," said company president and CEO Scott McGregor.

Did TIME cave in to political pressure? I neither know nor care. What I do know is that this year's choice is simply ludicrous.

Nokia India and IBM will offer a solution for Nokia business phones to get direct, secure access to email and personal information through IBM Domino servers.

"We are working on LTE device for next year, 2011. We think the US mobile operator will be taking some leading and pushing the LTE 4G in the US market, but however, we are seeing the rest of world will be deploying LTE network elsewhere in 2011, could be second half of 2011," said Peter Chou.

With the acquisition of Avalon Microelectronics, Altera is allowed to expand its portfolio of customizable IP solutions for OTN (Optical Transport Network) applications, supporting data rates at 1.2G, 2.5G and 10G, as well as 40G and 100G.

The rise is partly because of good news: The outlook for growth has improved, putting less pressure on investors to keep their money in ultra-safe bonds. When there's less demand for bonds, their interest rates - or yield - go up to attract more investors.

Nokia plans to offer severance packages worth 5-15 months of regular salary but hopes some of the employees affected will be relocated elsewhere in the company.

Trina Solar, the world's No.2 solar panel maker by market value, aims to take a 10% or more share of the global market as it beefs up production with capital spending of up to $US400 million next year.

Nokia has warned that another of its new range of smartphones will be delayed, highlighting the difficulties facing the Finnish group as it struggles to regain lost ground in the fast-growing smartphone market.

The currency rose as much as 2.3% to NT$29.890 versus the greenback, its highest since October 1997, before trimming its gain to close at NT$30.45.

A brief look at all the tablets on the market or soon to hit the stores.

Toshiba will spend about US$1.19 billion to build a new fabrication plant to produce the panels for Apple.

The US Army wants to issue every soldier an iPhone or Android cellphone -it could be a soldier's choice. And to top it off, the Army wants to pay your monthly phone bill.

Micron says some flash controller jobs are going to migrate down stack towards the NAND chips, freeing up controller manufacturers from chip-dependent work they shouldn't be doing. It sees low-level flash controllers developing and taking on error management, taking this job away from existing NAND controllers.

None of the companies involved in the bidding have publicly disclosed their participation. But those patents are likely what Apple is most interested in, since it's rumored that a "Verizon iPhone" will come with LTE support.

We may doubt the prospects of the bada platform, but Samsung is one stubborn company and that could be a good thing after all. As a matter of fact, they said the plan to sell 5 million bada-powered devices this year is going just fine.

In the smartphone business, the conventional wisdom is that everyone is battling for third place behind Google and Apple.