Samsung Electronics, the world's largest mobile phone maker, said on Thursday it would pay US$400 million in royalties for patents held by wireless technology firm InterDigital.

Samsung Electronics on Friday streamlined its businesses into two major groups, joining its chip and LCD units and combining its telecom and media divisions.

Yahoo will pay new CEO Carol Bartz at least US$19 million in cash and stock during her first year on the job and top it off with an incentive package likely to yield a huge windfall if she can turn around the long-struggling Internet company.

The Palm Pre may be sold exclusively through Best Buy Mobile (in addition to at Sprint stores) for the first two months of its release.

Helping capitalists out of a predicament of their own making is a delicate business, but any rescue mechanism should have built-in sanctions to raise risk awareness and reduce the probability of future crises. Banking regulators, central banks and governments should answer bankers' cries of help with a consistent and robustly capitalist approach.

ASML Holding NV, a key equipment supplier to Intel and other chip makers, swung to a fourth-quarter net loss, hurt by a slumping semiconductor market as customers struggled to get credit.

An economic stimulus bill being crafted by Democratic leaders in the US Congress and aides to President-elect Barack Obama will cost about $850 billion, according to a government source.

Spansion, the NOR flash manufacturer which bought Israel NROM company Saifun last year, has hired Barclay's Capital to investigate ways of selling itself to another company, or entering a partnership with another company.

ON Semiconductor has introduced the industry's first 4-amp supercapacitor LED flash driver for high-megapixel camera phones and standalone camera applications.

EV Group (EVG) and Brewer Science have announced the installation of an EVG 500 series wafer-bonding system at Brewer Science's Taiwan applications lab. Located in Hsinchu Science Park, this joint effort offers customers localized support in the Asia-Pacific region for 3D IC and other advanced process development programs.

Sumitomo, Chisso and Cambrios Technologies have agreed the companies will jointly promote and commercialize "wet-coatable" transparent conductive ink as a replacement for ITO (indium tin oxide) in the field of TFT-LCD.

Motorola is cutting 4,000 more jobs as consumers stave off purchases amid the economic recession. Revenues in the fourth period fell to between US$7-7.2 billion. Sales of US$7 billion would represent a 27%drop from a year earlier.

The Sony PlayStation 2 debuted in 2000, before the beginning of the Bush administration, when Google Inc. was still a private search startup and the iPod and Windows XP hadn't been born. Yet despite its age in a business obsessed with the new, the video game console remains a big seller today. In fact, Sony Corp. announced Tuesday that it has sold 50 million PlayStation 2 units in North America.

Economic weakness continued to spread across the nation as real estate markets remained in distress and consumers kept their pocketbooks closed, according to the latest Federal Reserve report on regional economic conditions.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Wednesday he will take a leave of absence from the computer and music-player maker because of health issues. Apple shares fell 8% to $78.40 in after-hours trading. They were halted after closing down $2.38 to $85.33 in Wednesday regular-hours trading.

Freescale Semiconductor reacted to weakening business conditions Tuesday with a series of austerity moves to cut spending. The Austin-based chipmaker said it will temporarily freeze all salaries and promotions, require executives to take pay cuts and force all workers to take five unpaid days off in the first quarter.

Japanese electronics giant Toshiba has confirmed it is in talks to buy Fujitsu's hard disk drive (HDD) arm. The Nikkei business daily said any deal between Fujitsu and Toshiba would be worth 30bn-40bn yen ($340m-$450m; £233m-£308m).

FormFactor, which specializes in wafer probe cards, has announced a global reorganization and cost reduction plan. As part of the plan the company will reduce its workforce by 22%.

Nortel Networks Corp, North America's biggest telephone equipment maker, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, hoping to save a once highflying business whose decade-long decline has accelerated with the global economic crisis.

The creditors of Hynix Semiconductor yesterday said they aimed to sell their 36% controlling stake in the world's second-largest maker of memory chips by the end of September.

Nearly 1,500 CEOs left their jobs last year, including 221 in the technology and telecommunications sector, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

Gartner is canceling two of its biggest technology conferences due to the economic downturn. "As a result of this review, we have decided to cancel this year's Spring Symposium/ITxpo in Las Vegas and Barcelona. While a number of factors influenced this decision, the primary reason for the change is the current macro economic environment and its anticipated impact on attendee travel and overall event attendance," Gartner said in the statement.