International Business Machines is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems in a combination that would bolster IBM's heft on the Internet, in data storage and in government and telecommunications areas, according to people familiar with the matter.

Energy Conversion Devices' shares plummeted 30.3% in morning trading on Tuesday, after the solar-equipment maker warned investors that its third-quarter earnings would fall short of earlier projections amid a weakening economic environment.

"We want to make sure the government will not simply inject capital into any industry, but hope we could use our leverage to help build up the industry again," Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou said in a speech.

Discovery Communications says the Kindle electronic book readers from Amazon.com violate a patent that Discovery registered in 2007.

Nvidia has announced that it has signed a tools and middleware license agreement for PlayStation 3 with Sony Computer Entertainment. As a result, the binary version of the Nvidia PhysX technology software development kit (SDK) is now available to registered PS3 developers for free download and use on the SCEI Developer Network.

The next-gen mobile OS for Apple's mobile communications devices will bring Bluetooth connectivity, turn-by-turn GPS navigation, and greater integration with external peripherals, as well as cut and paste, improved sync, and support for MMS messages.

VLSI Research said ASML overtook TEL for the second spot in its annual ranking of equipment suppliers. Applied Materials remained on top, while KLA-Tencor and Lam Research were in the fourth and fifth spots. The Top 10 declined slightly faster than the total IC manufacturing equipment industry, which dwindled 25.1% to $41.8 billion.

Inspur International, a Hong Kong-listed computer and information technology company, has said it's not interested in acquiring a stake in Qimonda AG, the memory-chipmaker that filed for insolvency in January. The Financial Times Deutschland reported on March 16 that the Shandong-based company would acquire about 50% of Qimonda to help the company exit bankruptcy.

Mitsubishi Electric will add three new products to its "Diafine" industrial TFT LCD module series. The light reflectance of the new products is about 90% lower than that of their predecessors.

Four out of five global electronic display companies have adopted environmentally-sustainable practices in their businesses, according to a recent iSuppli survey, indicating the greening of the display industry has moved beyond the talk phase and into actual practice.

Samsung Electronics, which employs VA (vertically-aligned) display technology, and LG Display, which adopts IPS (in-plane switching) display technology, are fiercely competing over share of the Chinese LCD TV market.

Power consumption of large LCD TVs can be drastically cut simply by controlling their luminance to a level "agreeable" to viewers, said Satoru Kubota, a professor at Seikei University, in his speech at Ergonomics Symposium on FPD 2009, which took place on March 6, 2009.

Brother Industries will release the "brother document viewer SV-100B," an information terminal equipped with an electronic paper module, in Japan June 1, 2009.