Sony who is desperate to cut their massive losses has commenced talks with arch rival LG to make LCD panels for their Bravia LCD TV range, the talks come a month after the Company signed a deal with Sharp to make large screen Bravia panels.

"Samsung Electronics was asked to supply 50 million 8Gb NAND flash chips to Apple, while Hynix was set to supply 20 million," a high-ranking industry source told The Korea Times by Monday.

According to IC Insights' update to its 2009 forecast, released Thursday, the "perfect storm" of negative factors that have damaged business in the first half of 2009 will bring about a much more "friendly" environment for the IC industry in the second half of the year.

China's exports increased last month, but still were down 17% year-on-year, according to figures released by the Chinese government. Imports to China dropped 25% on year to US$72 billion.

Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso announced a historic US$150 billion stimulus package Friday aimed to turn around the recession in the world's second-largest economy.

China has unveiled plans to establish a US$10 billion investment fund for south-east Asian countries. It also offered credit of US$15 billion to the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) which comprises of Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Brunei, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

SandForce has announced a new family of solid-state disk (SSD) processors that the company claims will allow lower-cost, commodity NAND flash memory to be used in data center operations. The disks will also be faster and more reliable for use in mobile applications, the company said.

The Japanese government will lift punitive tariffs on computer chips South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor makes, leading to a settlement of a three-year-old trade dispute between the two countries, Kyodo News reported Monday, citing Finance Ministry officials.

Motorola's ex-CFO, Paul Liska, filed suit against the company late February in Cook Country Circuit Court, Illinois in which he claims Motorola's Mobile Devices executives were giving forecasts "based on inaccurate or unsupportable financial assumptions." But Motorola has responded saying Liska was a "treacherous officer" who concocted a "extortion-like scheme designed to portray himself as a whistle blower and demand millions in return for his silence."

According to a variety of sources, the talks are preliminary and wide-ranging, focused on what kind of commercial relationship Yahoo and Microsoft could have in the future.