Disappointing sales forecasts from National Semiconductor and Texas Instruments triggered the sell-off. The letdown comes just two weeks after Intel warned its sales for July through September would fall below its earlier projections.

Analog chip vendor Texas Instruments has lowered the upper end of its forecast range for third-quarter profit and sales, indicating that semiconductor demand may be slipping as economic growth slows.

A trade pact between China and Taiwan, widely seen as the most significant agreement since civil war divided them in 1949, has come into effect.

Altera has announced that its revenues for the third quarter are now expected to grow 10-14% on quarter. The company's prior guidance was for sequential growth of 4-8%.

Pliant Technology has introduced a new family of lower-cost, higher-capacity solid state drives (SSD) based on consumer-grade NAND flash memory but built for data center use.

Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo will step down on September 20, and be succeeded by Microsoft Corp.'s Stephen Elop.

Intel's new chip - code named Moorestown - would result in smart phone visuals and remove the need for a separate graphics chip in computers.

Earlier this week Samsung unveiled the new processor for smartphones, tablets and netbooks, which is codenamed Orion. Analysts at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) said our "checks suggest that this processor also uses ARM GPU".

Bank of China and Bank of Communications have applied to become the first mainland China banks to set up representative offices in Taiwan, according to the island's Financial Supervisory Commission.

Anadigics has announced that its AWT6264 power amplifier drives the WiMAX connectivity in Samsung's recently-released Epic 4G handset.

The US trade deficit was smaller than expected in July, figures have shown, as exports reached their highest level in almost two years.

The prototype suggests future products could eliminate the cost and bulk of for power management conversion circuitry OLEDs need today.

Arm Holdings has taken the wraps off its next major chip design, promising a five-fold increase in performance that the company hopes will take it beyond smartphones and into new types of equipment such as high-performance routers and servers.

Don't look now, but a fab tool downturn could be on the horizon.

By the end of 2010, Android will be just barely behind the iPhone --- 14.9% to the iPhone's 15.9%, a report concludes.