After months of potential acquisition talks, Microchip Technology Inc Tuesday officially ended its pursuit of FPGA maker Atmel.

Research In Motion (RIM) said its quarterly earnings and gross margin would come in at the low end of expectations even as subscriber growth topped forecasts, a warning that sent shares of the BlackBerry maker down 12% Wednesday.

Pioneer will cut 10,000 jobs and close its television operations as the slump in global electronics sales forced the company to widen its annual loss forecast to a record 130 billion yen (US$1.44 billion).

Rumors at ISSCC and other events are that Taiwan foundry vendor United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) is mulling over plans to join IBM's "fab club." The group, which co-develops advanced process technology and shares the associated costs, consists of AMD, Chartered, IBM, Infineon, ST, Toshiba, NEC, Freescale and Sony. AMD's proposed foundry spin-off is also part of the group.

Applied Materials, the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductor production equipment, posted its first quarterly loss since 2003 and said it would cut back production, sending its shares sliding 3.2%.

Democratic leadership sources say they have worked out a way around the disagreement between the Senate and House over education funding in the economic stimulus bill.

Ailing Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory has said that it was in alliance talks with three Taiwanese firms but denied a report that they had reached an accord on merging their operations. The Nikkei economic daily reported Wednesday that Elpida had reached a basic agreement with the Taiwanese companies to integrate in a bid to survive amid falling demand for semiconductors.

For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009, revenues were US$481.1 million compared to US$1.2 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, a decrease of 60%. For the twelve months ended January 25, 2009, revenues were US$3.4 billion compared to US$4.1 billion for the twelve months ended January 27, 2008, a decrease of 16%.

German technology company Infineon Technologies AG has said it would expand a Hungarian production facility which makes components for solar and wind power systems, as a result of strong demand for the products.