Nanya Technology, Taiwan's No. 2 DRAM chip maker, said on Wednesday it plans to raise the contract price of its chips by 10% in January from the level in late December.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), China's top contract chip maker, is discussing the possibility of selling a strategic stake in itself to Intel, sources familiar with the talks said on Tuesday. The possible alliance could help Intel expand its business in China, which it has described as its fastest-growing major market.

The annual Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, will get underway on Wednesday in Las Vegas. And while conference organizers are still expecting a strong turnout, evidence abounds that many companies will be dialing back on their participation at what is normally a high-profile, and high-dollar, event.

A propagation and optimization solution provider wireless industry announced that it has acquired Wi-Sys Communications, an Ottawa, Canada based company that specializes in GPS antenna and receiver technology.

Japan's Sanyo Electric plans to cut up to 1,000 jobs to revamp its struggling businesses before being bought by Panasonic, a press report said Tuesday.

A post on the Website of employee group Alliance for IBM said the company may cut 16,000 jobs, which would top the 15,600 eliminated by CEO Sam Palmisano in 2002. The worldwide slump has tightened companies' technology budgets and IBM may report a 1.6% drop in sales last quarter to US$28.4 billion, based on the average analyst estimate.

Apple has agreed to start selling digital songs from its iTunes store without copy protection software.

Hynix Semiconductor, the world's No. 2 maker of computer memory chips, is set to raise $249 million in a new share issue this month under a shareholder-led support package, an executive said on Tuesday.

Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor has a prototype low-cost notebook using ARM-designed chips is the latest evidence that the UK company could play a major part in the next wave of computing.

The palm-sized device in a larger 500GB capacity is on sale from various online retailers now for around £120.

China faces surging protests and riots in 2009 as rising unemployment stokes discontent, a state-run magazine said in a blunt warning of the hazards to Communist Party control from a sharp economic downturn.

Toshiba, a company best known for making laptops and consumer electronics, on Monday said that it will enter the solar-photovoltaics business. Toshiba's photovoltaics business will be part of the conglomerate's Transmission Distribution & Industrial Systems business, which makes equipment for natural-gas power plants.

A slowdown in technology node migrations at the major DRAM producers is adding to the expected capital expenditure cuts manufacturing as companies struggle to combat increasing losses and preserve cash, according to the latest report from DRAMeXchange. The spending cuts are a direct result of the combined DRAM industry losing approximately US$8 billion in 2008.

Spansion, the Sunnyvale flash-memory maker, chose to borrow US$74.8 million of the US$85 million available to it under an agreement with UBS, the Swiss investment banker that holds auction-rate securities that were worth US$121.9 million when Spansion first bought them. The investment has a current estimated market value of US$107.4 million, according to a filing Spansion made Monday.