The US solar energy industry hopes to persuade Customs officials to reverse a decision to impose a 2.5% tariff on solar panel imports after more than two decades of duty-free trade in the product, an industry official said on Thursday. In the worst case scenario, US importers of solar panels could face some US$70 million in tariffs and penalties for product already imported this year.

Japan's Toshiba said on Thursday it has taken over Fujitsu's loss-making hard drive business as it seeks to eke out growth in notebook PC hard drives in a market dominated by bigger rivals.

"Of course every transition to a new process has its problems," stated one source who requested anonymity. "We just weren't expecting it to be this slow."

Samsung, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments already use ARM designed chip cores. Intel used to have an ARM license too, but flogged it to Marvell.

Samsung and Hynix sources said strong demand for advanced DRAM or DDR3 chips, has resulted in a price upturn for both DRAM and NAND flash memory chips used in high-end handheld gadgets such as smart phones.

SST (Silicon Storage Technology) has revised its estimates to reflect an improvement in its expected results for the third quarter, ending Sept. 30, 2009.