Japan's top chipmaker Toshiba has said it will end production of mobile phones in Japan due to plummeting demand amid an economic slump. The company said its only domestic plant for mobile phones will halt operations in October.

Japan's economy has seen its worst ever quarterly performance, with GDP shrinking 4% in the first three months of 2009. The world's second biggest economy, which depends heavily on exports, has been hit hard by the global downturn.

Taiwan's health authorities on Wednesday reported the island's first confirmed case of Influenza A (H1N1), in a foreign male who arrived by plane from Hong Kong earlier this week. A(H1N1) flu has claimed about 79 lives worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

Europe's depleted semiconductor sector needs a strong leader to unite the continent's chipmakers around common goals if chip manufacturing in the region is to survive, the European head of industry association SEMI said.

Strong macro factors could boost solar companies, though weak demand, falling module prices and dim profit reports from Chinese solar companies could pressure the sector in the near term.

The cost and performance benefits of flip-chip packaging, combined with the increased cost of gold bonding wire, have made flip-chip technology competitive for applications ranging from cell phones to gaming chips.

Globalfoundries has announced a joint development agreement with T-RAM, as part of which the two firms will bring T-RAM's Thyristor-RAM embedded memory technology to "advanced technology nodes."

Hong Kong's Census and Statistics Department said the seasonally adjusted jobless rate rose to 5.3% during February to April from 5.2% recorded in January to March.

Sony Electronics Asia Pacific has introduced three new entry-level cameras. The new cameras support the Memory Stick Duo slot for high-capacity Memory Stick PRO Duo and Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo media, and the additional SD (Secure Digital) slot that is also SDHC-compliant.

Analyst Rywicker says Verizon's access line sale could benefit DBS provider.

Why, if investment is rising so rapidly, was its contribution to GDP growth in 1Q09 (2pp of the 6.1% total) so low? And why is electricity output still falling, down by 3.5% on year in April? The slowdown in on-year industrial production growth, to 7.3% in April from 8.3% in March, raises further concerns.

Samsung Electronics said it will press ahead with its research and development effort. The world's biggest producer of DRAM chips is to spend some US$2 billion on chips R&D for 2009.

Taiwan's stock market has a rare chance to transform itself into Asia's Nasdaq, as the island improves its relationship with China, while capital markets in the US and Europe are largely frozen because of the financial crisis, says the head of private equity group H&Q Asia Pacific.

A collection of top memory manufacturers formalized their commitment to developing a low-power DRAM for use in mobile devices on Monday. The backdrop, unfortunately, was a catastrophic drop in DRAM revenue, as measured by Gartner.

Semiconductor packaging/assembly/test companies are gently ratcheting up their manufacturing capacity, but it won't be enough to prevent a culling of the herd, with nearly 20 (mostly older) facilities likely to be shuttered within a span of two years, according to new analyses from Gartner.