As advances in light-emitting diode technology push it into the commercial realm, component distributors are retooling their operations to help rewire buildings to take advantage of its energy-saving capabilities.

Field Emission Technologies, a Japanese R&D firm spun out of Sony in 2006, announced that it is poised to mass produce 26-inch field-emission display (FED) panels by the end of 2009. Compared with other flat-panel technologies such as LCDs and plasma displays, FEDs have long been known for their superior performance, including higher contrast ratio, lower power consumption and wider viewing angle. Charles Spindt at SRI International developed the principles for FED technology in 1968.

...the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that Canon had not broken its contract with Nano-Proprietary (now called Applied Nanotech Holdings) since Canon is now the sole owner of its previous joint venture with Toshiba, SED The court also reinstated Canon's license to the SED tech, but since Canon stopped working on the tech last year, it'll probably be a while before we see any SED displays actually show up.

Under these agreements, Motorola will supply CMCC with GSM network equipment and a range of services. The expanded and optimized GSM networks will then be deployed across 16 provinces and municipalities within the coverage area of CMCC, namely Beijing, Tianjin, Sichuan, Zhejiang, Henan, Hunan, Guangdong, Yunnan, Fujian, Hubei, Shanxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Jiangxi, Anhui and Guizhou. These contracts also enable China Mobile to deliver enhanced and value-added multimedia functionality and services.

Seiko Epson Corp developed a 3D display that is targeted at mobile phones and can show high-resolution 3D images visible to the naked eye with no special glasses.

Litepanels has filed a lawsuit against Sony related to consumer and professional video equipment and products that infringe two of Litepanels’ patents covering LED technology.

Carl Zeiss MicroImaging GmbH has bought CoolLED's precisExcite LED fluorescence excitation system in the US, giving US microscope users access to the technology.

...Well, 32-bit microcontrollers, especially multi-core designs with sophisticated peripherals, are in many ways highly flexible ASSPs. That is really a more accurate characterization than to call them MCUs in anything but a purely architectural sense. As such, they can compete against ASSPs from fabless semiconductor vendors. But they can also compete against FPGAs, offering lower design time, higher performance, much better power consumption, and much lower price for large designs...

Siemens AG has told Fujitsu it wants to pull out of their Fujitsu Siemens Computers joint venture, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. A spokesman for Fujitsu, however, told Reuters the article was "baseless". The Japanese computer firm has been in talks with Siemens over the renewal of their contract for Fujitsu Siemens Computers, but "no solid decisions have been made", Masahiro Yamane, a spokesman for Fujitsu told Reuters.