IDC forecasts that worldwide semiconductor revenues will grow 9% on year in 2011, and will achieve a CAGR of 6% for the 2010-2015 forecast period. "Near term, the semiconductor market should hit bottom by the second quarter of next year and begin a growth cycle that will take us into the second half of 2012..."

China's exports for November 2010 were up 34.9% versus a year earlier, compared with an expected 25%. In October the increase was only 22.9%.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) plans to build one more "mega-fab" at a cost of up to NT$300 billion (US$10 billion). Construction of the fab, codenamed Fab 16, will start in 2014 probably at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP).

China's crackdown on ethnic reporters and Iran's sustained suppression of critics has helped push the number of journalists jailed worldwide to 145 - the highest level in 14 years, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.

ASML now expects fourth-quarter bookings to be above two billion euro. "NAND flash memory investments for the high volume ramp of new technologies and foundry/logic commitments for new strategic fab projects are driving brisk lithography demand for 2011..."

Computer hackers have sent one of the world's biggest credit card companies into meltdown in revenge for cutting off payments to the WikiLeaks website. The attack was launched by a shadowy international group called ?？nonymous' which

China is awarding a peace prize to counter the Nobel recognizing imprisoned democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo. Organizers of the Confucius Peace Prize will honor former Taiwanese vice president Lien Chan in Beijing for his efforts at building peace between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.

Everybody knows BlackBerry OS 6 is a stopgap. It's a way to keep the business going (and keep enterprise customers attached to their BlackBerry Enterprise Servers) while RIM works on the world-beating next big thing, which seems to involve a QNX core, TAT interface, Torch Mobile Web browser, and dual-core processors.

Toshiba's shipments of NAND flash memory chips may fall as much as 20% in January and February because of a power outage at a plant, the company said.

The chips will be used in "premier" smartphone brands, Otellini said today at an investor conference in San Francisco. He declined to name any customers.

The billionaire founder of social network Facebook has agreed to give the majority of his wealth to charity, part of a broader group of rich entrepreneurs committing to philanthropy earlier in their lives. Mark Zuckerberg has signed onto the "Giving Pledge," which asks its signatories to commit publicly to give away the majority of their wealth.

Intellectual Ventures has filed patent lawsuits against nine tech companies. The first lawsuit targets software security vendors Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro and Check Point. The second lawsuit targets DRAM and flash memory vendors Hynix and Elpida. The third names FPGA vendors Altera, Lattice and Microsemi, which recently acquired Actel and its FPGA business.

A person familiar with the situation said earlier the company plans to raise up to US$300 million in the IPO.

The SLE 78 chip in the new German ID card has been certified by the Germany Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). Infineon developed the chips for the ID card in Neubiberg near Munich, Germany.

Texas Instruments has narrowed its fourth-quarter financial forecasts that match analysts' projection, citing higher demand for communications equipment.

Swarms of cameras, microphones and reporters with earpieces dangling were buzzing around outside the court, trying to figure out which entrance Wikileaks editor and founder Assange nd his legal team would use.

Nokia is attempting to shore up its defences against smartphone rivals with a cost-cutting programme that will see the number of UK service centres cut by a third.