Veeco Instruments, which makes equipment used to produce LEDs, solar cells and data storage, expects second-quarter earnings of US$0.78-0.90 a share, before items, on revenues of US$220-240 million.

Chinese battery manufacturer BYD, which is readying a line of all-electric vehicles, plans to introduce a home energy suite that includes solar panels and batteries.

Car maker Chery Automobile Co is keen to buy into the solar energy business of Taiwanese LCD panel maker AU Optronics,

Xilinx has announced that NEC Display Solutions has adopted the Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA family for three models of its DLP Cinema projectors.

Lithography light source vendor Cymer swung to net profits of US$16 million in the first quarter of 2010 compared to losses of US$11.5 million a year earlier.

STMicroelectronics, Europe's largest semiconductor company, swung to profits of US$57 million in the first quarter of 2010 from losses of US$541 million a year ago. First-quarter revenues rose 40% to US$2.32 billion, led particularly by demand for chips used in cars and computers.

Monthly Japanese shipments held steady in March 2010 in a sign that global demand, particularly from Asia, is still expanding, lending support to the country's export-dependent economy.

Rambus has net profits of US$150.9 million for the first quarter, compared with losses of US$17.4 million in the same quarter last year. Revenues for the quarter soared 492% to US$161.9 million, thanks to a licensing agreement with Samsung.

Infineon Technologies and Fairchild Semiconductor have announced an agreement to create compatibility between their power MOSFET packages. Specifically the agreement covers the Infineon PowerStage 3x3 and Fairchild MLP 3x3 packages.

SanDisk swung to net profits of US$235 million for the quarter ended April 4 from losses of US$208 million a year ago. "We delivered SanDisk's first ever billion dollar Q1 in total revenue. This performance was driven by several factors including our OEM business which grew to 63% of product revenues balancing out Q1 retail seasonality..."