Research institute IMEC has appointed Kees Den Otter, former president of TSMC Europe, to the position of vice president of emerging business.

Chinese authorities may announce a currency policy change before the second US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in May.

Company's E19 Series Offers Record Efficiency of 19 Percent or Greater

Amkor has posted profits of US$0.18 a share on revenues of US$646 million in the first quarter. The Street had been expecting US$0.20 and US$644.2 million. Amkor expects second-quarter revenues to be US$710-736 million, and profits of US$0.22-0.27 per share.

President Ma Ying-jeou argued Taiwan had no option but to sign the pact with China. Tsai Ing-wen, leader of the opposition DPP, insisted Taiwan would do better to negotiate with China slowly through existing WTO structures. Tsai also accused Ma of upsetting the regional balance of power, alarming Japan and South Korea...

Anhui Jianghuai Automobile and Changan Automobile aim to poach the talent nurtured by Japan's top automakers.

Spain is lancing an 18 billion-euro ($24 billion) investment bubble in solar energy that has boosted public liabilities, choking off new projects as it works to cut power prices and insulate itself from Greece's debt crisis.

Beijing residents and developers will be able to apply for government subsidies totaling 200 million yuan to install solar water-heating systems in residential and public buildings.

Motorola's mobile phone division is on track to return to profitability in the fourth quarter of this year boosted by strong firstquarter sales of Google Android-powered smartphones.

A new research report predicts that the number of solid-state drives (SSD) in enterprise servers and storage systems will explode over the next five years, increasing by a factor of 50.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has approved a controversial plan to build the nation's first offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound... The decision to build the 130 wind turbines has followed almost a decade of reviews, challenges and appeals at the local, state and federal level.

Xilinx has reported revenues of US$529.0 million for the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2010, up 3% sequentially and 34% on year. It expects sales for the current quarter to grow 5-9% sequentially.

Microsoft and HTC signed a patent deal involving HTC's mobile smartphones running the open source Android operating system

Spansion has reported net profits of US$3.7 million for the first quarter, a return to profitability from net losses of US$512.6 million in the same quarter of 2009.

ARM CEO Warren East said the company was planning to hire about 100 more engineers in 2010 - the first headcount additions for four years - mainly to work on high-end processors that are used in smartphones and netbooks.

Apple has bought Intrinsity, the Texas-based chip outfit that (supposedly) played a role in the design of the chip driving the iPad.

Texas Instruments said it is ramping up a second phase of expansion at a factory near its Dallas headquarters. The expansion will double the plant's capacity to produce chips that go into products such as cell phones, computers and telecommunications equipment.

Infineon Technologies has raised its 2010 outlook for a second time this year on higher demand from automotive and industrial customers for chip cards and security applications. The chipmaker's fiscal second-quarter net income was 79 million euros (US$104.2 million) compared with net lossES of 239 million euros a year earlier.

Although Apple and the iPhone get all the attention in the mobile market, it's still RIM and its ubiquitous BlackBerry smartphones that reign supreme in the corporate world.

Net income for the first quarter of 2010 was US$27.5 million, compared to net losses of US$51.1 million a year ago. "We were pleased with the successful ramp into high volume of new technologies such as embedded wafer-level ball-grid array (eWLB) and the continued growth of our business in advanced technologies such as hybrid flip-chip and wafer level packaging..."