TI narrowed the range of its first-quarter forecast, with the midpoint of its revenue guidance rising 2.7%.

Apple is planning to launch a netbook computer with a touchscreen as early as the second half of this year, two people close to the situation told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday. Apple is working with Taiwan's Wintek and Quanta Computer to assemble the new netbooks.

Shipments of notebook PCs with LED backlights reached 3.7 million in the final quarter of 2008 – a 62 percent rise on the preceding quarter.

The LED ligting market growth of $5B by 2012 is too optimistic at a time when growth in consumer lectronics is on the decline due to bad economy. The economic recovery will commence only in the middle of 2010 and the estimate for LED consumer lighting market can only be around $2B.

GfK Marketing Services Japan (GfK Japan) announced the results of its survey on sales trends of home appliances and information technology (IT) devices in Japan in 2008.

IDEC Corp developed the "Fiber Beam," a rear-projection display that uses resin optical fibers as transmission media.

Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), a Taiwan-based IC packaging and test services provider, has expressed interest in the packaging and test unit of STMicroelectronics, two industry sources close to ASE told mergermarket.

Arizona State University FDC created the world's first “touchscreen” active matrix display on a flexible, glass-free substrate. Achieved through a collaborative effort between the FDC and its partners E Ink Corporation and DuPont Teijin Films, this revolutionary display is the first demonstration of a flexible electronic display that enables real-time user input.

At the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference last year, AMD's Bruno La Fontaine revealed the IBM Alliance's Typhoon, a 45nm full-field test chip using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography at the first metal level. With that project finished the middle of last year, the alliance — including IBM, AMD, Toshiba and other partners — decided to kick it up a notch. "We were going to move on to 32nm, but technology is moving so fast, if we spent our time on that, we would never get to 16nm, which is where EUV will be used..."

The most-watched technology sector stock index, the Nasdaq Composite Index, is in danger of breaking through the 52-week low set last November amid continued investor worries about the impact of the downturn on consumer spending on gadgets such as PCs and smartphones.

To Emanuel Sachs, September 11 was a reminder of the perils of an oil-dependent U.S. energy policy. The events that transpired that day were jarring enough to prompt him to restart his solar research. Nearly eight years later, he is CEO at 1366 Technologies, a company formed two years ago to commercialize the work he had done at MIT.

Shares in Asia's major makers of DRAM chips fell sharply Friday (March 6), on profit-taking and concerns that Taiwan's proposal to realign its struggling chip sector through mergers may take time and do little to change weak industry fundamentals.

As California and the rest of the nation stagger from massive layoffs and soaring unemployment, companies in Taiwan have largely opted to cut pay and work hours to deal with the economic crisis. The practice gives workers some security but, over time, employee morale still suffers.

Micron is bidding for between $20 million and $100 million to convert idle buildings in Boise and Nampa to manufacture solar panels and high-efficiency lighting components. The company says its plan could establish Idaho as a world leader in developing and manufacturing solar modules or LED lighting, or both.

Japan's government is fortifying its defense of the corporate sector by broadening sources of public funding for companies struggling to cope with the deepening recession. Goldman Sachs analysts in a report Friday identified 15 Japanese technology companies on their financial risk watch list.