MOtorola today announced the Droid Pro, which is clearly going after the BlackBerry segment and will be on sale in the first week of November on Verizon Wireless. Motorola Mobility's CEO Sanjay Jha, said: "34% of BlackBerry users are ready to switch to Android if it supports what the IT department wants."

As of August 10, Android phones represented 32% of the smartphones sold this year. In comparison, Apple iPhones accounted for 25% of devices sold and RIM BlackBerry handsets represented 26% of sales.

"We're considering various options of outsourcing as well as strengthening our own production capacity because of rising demand," a spokesperson for Sony said. The Nikkei English News recently reported that Sony plans to hire Fujitsu for the bulk of the production process for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor sensors used in digital cameras and camera phones.

"Although discussions are ongoing with Sony and Renesas Electronics to secure their continued access to our semiconductor packaging technology through a licensing relationship with us, these discussions have not sufficiently advanced, thus necessitating this lawsuit," said Henry Nothhaft, chairman and CEO of Tessera.

"In the DRAM sector, Hynix, which focuses its production on 44-nano DRAM products, aims to finish its development of 38-nano products within this year for mass production early next year," a company spokesman said.

Elpida Memory president and CEO Yukio Sakamoto said in an interview that the company is delaying plans to boost production capacity at its Taiwanese unit. "Through the summer, demand for PC memory didn't rise as much I had expected," Sakamoto said. "If there's no demand, there's no point in adding capacity."

The recent dust-up between China and Japan suggested how neighbours can have incompatible interests. But in business, things are often rather different. In one example, China's emergence as a producer of sophisticated technology is helping strengthen one of the few big microchip businesses left in Japan.

LG Electronics said that it had scrapped a plan to launch a tablet computer based on Google Inc's Android 2.2 operation system known as "Froyo," a decision that may delay the rollout of its first tablet PC slated for next quarter.

According to the the SEC filing, Ballmer was eligible for a bonus this past year of between 0% and 200% of his base $675,000 salary. He received 100%.

More reports on the Motorola Stingray tablet, which is scheduled for 1Q11. The Stingray reportedly will be a full 10 inches with Android 3.0 Gingerbread, 16GB of on-board storage, and Tegra 2. It will also be "hardware upgradeable to LTE," initially launching with CDMA alone.

Toshiba plans to scrap plans to mass-produce OLED panels at its unit Toshiba Mobile Display and focus on high-demand LCD panels instead.

Some analysis on China-based solar companies.

Rising competition from Chinese solar companies and high entry costs are likely to limit the number of start-up companies going into the PV manufacturing market, a managing director at private equity firm CMEA Capital said.

Reports in China claimed that Apple is planning to switch its baseband allegiance to Qualcomm for the fifth-generation iPhone and second-gen iPad.

For its fiscal third quarter, SMSC expects adjusted earnings of US$0.42-0.43 per share on revenues of US$104-107 million.

The study found that Dual- and Triple-SIM card slot phones have grown to touch as much as 38.5% of the total India Mobile Handset shipments, from less than 1% in 2Q 2009 (April-June 2009 quarter).

China-based Sichuan Changhong Electric has committed to fulfilling purchasing target plans for Fairchild's power and mobile components through December 2015. Fairchild's devices are designed into a broad range of Changhong products including LED TVs, PDP TVs, LCD TVs, CRT TVs, set-top boxes, refrigerators and air conditioners.

48% of the surveyed app developers told an Open-First survey conducted between August 30 and September 10 that the amount of money they're making on the App Store was more than they'd expected.

The massive demand for the product outpaces last year's official launch of the iPhone 3G and 3GS in China. During that period, it had taken over a month before China Unicom had announced it sold 100,000 iPhone units.

Yesterday, Huawei launched its first phone in Singapore, the Ideos U8150. The smartphone packs Google's latest Android 2.2 operating system

Mobile phone maker Motorola and mobile phone carrier Verizon Wireless are releasing a special edition R2-D2 Droid smartphone that is sure to get snapped up by Star Wars lovers across the US.