ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute), Taiwan's largest and one of the world's leading high-tech research and development institutions, accepted the 2009 Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award in Consumer Electronics Tuesday evening in San Francisco for its FleXpeaker, paper-thin flexible speaker technology, besting more than 500 companies including HP, Livescribe and Motorola. This breakthrough will allow consumer electronic products of the future to become even lighter and slimmer.

Samsung's new SSD conforms to the new mini-SATA (mSATA) interface, and is about one-quarter the size of a 2.5-in SSD.

ASML generated net income of 20 million euro in the third quarter of 2009 compared to a net loss in the prior quarter. "ASML's third quarter sales doubled from the second quarter, stemming from technology transition demand for our immersion lithography systems as new DRAM devices are introduced and as Foundry customers are ramping 40nm products..."

China says both exports and imports fell in September from a year earlier but at a slower pace than previously.

Germany's next government plans to reduce incentives to generate solar power as early as 2010, the energy spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats said.

Qimonda already laid off 600 staff in April this year. Another 800 employees were sent on forced leave. Now, 590 of these will be laid off, while the remaining 200 employees will continue their force leave, according to local Portuguese media reports.

Elpida Memory plans to increase its stake in Rexchip Electronics to 71% by the end of 2009, Nikkei English News said, without citing anyone.

SanDisk is incorporating the X4 chips into existing storage cards, without any identifying labeling or change in pricing. The fact that it is not immediately passing cost savings on to consumers is a sign of easing conditions in the volatile market.

A better global economy and the launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system are expected to support demand for memory chips through the first half of 2010, the chief executive of Hynix Semicondcutor has commented.