After more than 30 years pitching first Macintosh computers and then iPod media players to consumers, Apple is using the iPhone to attract a new audience: business buyers. Jobs is seeking to recharge a stock that's shed 49% in 2008 and to keep momentum after revenued almost quadrupled in the past 5 years. Apple gets at least 80% of sales from consumers and half its revenue from the US, putting the computer maker at risk if people cut spending amid economic turmoil.

Nokia has announced a solid release date for Comes With Music, as well as the first compatible handsets. The unlimited music download service is set to arrive on a small handful of models, both old and new, in the UK starting October 16, with the US and other countries slated for sometime in early 2009.

Apple has announced via its Apple Developer Connection website that it has dropped the NDA that has left iPhone developers frustrated since the release of iPhone OS 2.0 this past July. In a note addressed "To Our Developers," Apple finally admitted that the NDA had "created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone's success."

Hardware verification languages have been around for over ten years now, with steadily growing adoption throughout this entire period. This adoption has been driven largely by the inability of manual directed verification approaches to keep pace with the complexity of the verification space for leading-edge design.

Chiu's remarks came after Tuesday's meeting of an economic advisory task force, during which VP Vincent Siew broached the subject of a sovereign fund. But the council said that it was not the government's priority to create a sovereign wealth fund, because such funds are intended for investment abroad, while the government needs money to finance public works at home. Council vice chairman San Gee said the most urgent task facing the country was to stimulate economic growth through domestic construction projects.

..Nintendo president Satoru Iwata took the wraps off the DSi, which packs a bulit-in camera, music playback and a bigger display than the current model. The DSi will ship in Japan on November 1, migrating to the US in 2009. It will sell for 18,900 yen, which translates to about US$179.

HP today became the second major storage vendor to make a big move into the iSCSI market this year, with a US$360 million acquisition of LeftHand Networks. The move follows Dell's US$1.4 billion acquisition of EqualLogic earlier this year and adds HP's name to the list of vendors chasing the fast-growing IP storage market.

...India, with nearly 300 million mobile users, is the second-largest wireless market in the world after China, and has the potential for further huge growth as just over a quarter of its population have cellphones now. Operators are signing up 8-9 million users every month, and Gartner, a consultancy, expects 737 million connections by 2012.

In the Gartner report, analysts Ken McGee and Mark McDonald cite government data, results of a survey of about 1,000 CIOs, and recent quarterly reports from top vendors to reaffirm an assessment made earlier this year that IT spending won't turn negative. Tech stocks have taken a beating on Wall Street but have recovered some this week.

Legislation extending tax credits for the solar, wind and biodiesel industries gained new life on Wednesday as Senate leaders said they plan to attach the tax bill to a US$700 billion economic rescue package.

In 2007, the sector attracted US$2.2 billion in venture-backed investments, up 45% from 2006. Biofuels production jumped from 4.9 billion gallons in 2006 to roughly 6.5 billion gallons last year. Meanwhile, in 2007 the US added 314 megawatts of new solar energy systems to the grid, up by 125% from the previous year.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is investing US$17.6 million in six projects that aim to develop prototype photovoltaic (PV) components and systems that will be commercialised by 2010.

Micron Technology fiscal fourth-quarter net loss widened on a US$205 million write-down on memory chips as their prices continued to decline. As the company posted its seventh straight quarterly loss, it announced a 20% cut in salaries of senior executives. "The global memory market continues to experience severe oversupply and price degradation," said CEO Steve Appleton.

TSMC has pushed out or delayed its initial high-k/metal-gate offering until 28-nm. In contrast, IBM and its partners plan to offer what they claim is a better gate-stack solution at 32nm. As previously reported, IBM, Chartered and Samsung plan to offer a high-k and metal-gate solution for 32nm. The companies in IBM's fab club will not offer a SiON option at 32nm and beyond.

The incorporation documents of Tejas Silicon Holdings (UK) Ltd. show that two of the executives of the company that has just bought the Germany fab operation of Atmel, are based in the United States. And apparently one of them, at least, has experience of running a mature fab operation.

A 36% stake in Hynix Semiconductor, the world's second biggest dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chipmaker, is going up for sale but there are few bidders on the horizon because of a down market. Samsung Electronics is currently the No. 1 contender.

Telecoms Korea confirms that LG and Samsung are researching Android, but it also says that the soonest we'll see Android handsets from either is the second half of 2009. That puts them nine months behind HTC.

Tejas Silicon Holdings has agreed to acquire the Heilbronn, Germany fab operation, including equipment, but will lease the facility and license fab process technology from Atmel. About 300 Atmel employees associated with fab operations and other support functions will become a part of Tejas Silicon, Atmel said. Atmel and Tejas Silicon will also enter into a supply agreement whereby Atmel will continue to procure products from the Heilbronn fab over a three-year period, Atmel said.