A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.6 jolted northern Japan on Sunday, shaking buildings in the capital Tokyo some 240km (150 miles) away. Fujitsu has said operations at its semiconductor plant in Fukushima prefecture, northeast Japan, were not affected by the quake.

A JP Morgan analyst has warned of what he considers to be the first warning signs that supply may be starting to outstrip demand in the chip sector. "After a strong start to 2010 characterized by low inventory, rampant component shortages, and extended lead times, we are starting to see our first negative data points..."

The total number of employees in India is projected to rise to 10,000 from about 6,000 currently, Cisco CEO John Chambers said at a conference in New Delhi today, without specifying a timeframe for the expansion.

Canon expects China's camera market to become the world's largest as early as 2015, overtaking the US, its head of the business said. The world's biggest camera maker is doubling the number of outlets and boosting its marketing workforce in the Asian nation.

NextWindow, a leading provider of optical touch screens to manufacturers of desktop PCs, monitors and large-format displays, has announced the opening of an office in Seoul, South Korea. The new office will be led by country manager Yong-sun Kim, who joins NextWindow after senior sales roles at international companies including Intel.

Hynix Semiconductor has said it would invest 465 billion won (US$410 million) to expand and upgrade its production capacity and research and development.

Former Sun Microsystems chief made announcement on personal blog this week

Sony has announced the development of a RGB laser light source module suitable for large screen projectors such as digital cinema projectors. The module incorporates high power lasers of the three primary colors: red, green and blue (RGB) with a combined output power of 21W (equivalent to 5,000 lumens), in a single package measuring 530cc, among the industry's smallest.

Sony plans to launch new 3D television sets in Japan from 10 June. A 46-inch 3D screen will cost around 350,000 yen (US$3,898), 52% more expensive than a regular Sony flatscreen television.

Technology managers have strong opinions on the merits of the gate-first and gate-last methods of depositing high-k dielectrics and metal gate electrodes. Controlling the PMOS V appears challenging with the gate-first method, while the gate-last approach requires layout engineers to adhere to new restrictive design rules to accommodate planarization requirements.

FormFactor, which makes probe cards used for testing wafers directly, has opened a new facility in Singapore as part of efforts to grow its business in Asia.

Konica Minolta has decided to enhance its production capacity of glass substrates of hard disk drives (HDDs) by adding production line in response to a rapid growth in demand and the accelerated increase in storage density.