Micron Technology Inc Chief Executive and Chairman Steve Appleton died in a small plane crash on Friday, a major loss for a U.S. memory chipmaker already struggling with sluggish computer sales and declining prices. The 51-year-old Appleton, a three-decade industry veteran who performed stunts at airshows, died after the small plane he was piloting crashed at an airport in Boise, Idaho, where the chipmaker is headquartered. His death stunned the tight-knit semiconductor industry. Appleton (...)

SEOUL—Hynix Semiconductor Inc. said on Thursday it sees a brighter market for chips as well as a rebound in dynamic-random-access-memory prices from the second quarter, following its reporting of a fourth-quarter net loss on weak PC demand. Hynix said that while demand for DRAM remains weak in the current three months, prices could rebound from the second quarter and overall market conditions improve toward the second half. [HYNIX] "In the first quarter, demand is still slow, mostly due to (...)

Toshiba Corp, Japan’s biggest chip maker, booked a 72 percent fall in quarterly operating profit on Tuesday and slashed its annual profit forecast as a strong yen and the euro-zone debt crisis hit profits. The industrial electronics conglomerate also cut its annual television sales forecast amid slumping domestic sales in a possible sign that bigger Japanese TV makers may be in for a steep fall in profits from their TV business when they report results over the coming days. Toshiba, the (...)

Booming smartphone sales made Samsung Electronics’ latest quarter its most profitable quarter ever, according to the company. Samsung has announced consolidated revenues of KRW47.3 trillion (US$42 billion) for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2011, a 13% increase on year. For the quarter, the company posted record operating profits of KRW5.3 trillion. Both figures came in line with its guidance. "Despite intensified competition amid the global economic slowdown, our Telecommunications (...)

More and more de­vices these days are re­ly­ing on USB plugs for pow­er. Imag­ine if your smart­phone could sim­ply plug in­to the wall di­rect­ly, with­out a need for that ex­tra trans­former! All it would take is a slight change to your out­let to add USB plug-in ca­pa­bil­i­ty, which should be pret­ty sim­ple- so why aren’t these in ev­ery home or ho­tel yet? Well, ex­pect them to spread... but per­haps not as quick­ly as you might think. We tried out the first UL list­ed op­tion, the New­erTech Pow­er2U USB (...)

(Bloomberg) — SanDisk Corp. shares dropped as much as 11 percent in late trading after the biggest maker of flash- memory cards gave a sales forecast that fell short of estimates, citing lower prices for chips that store data in mobile phones. SanDisk shares slipped as low as $46.75 in extended trading after the forecast. Before the report, they had gained 2.3 percent to $52.34 at yesterday’s close in New York. The stock has increased 7.8 percent in the past year. The company said it’s (...)

USB 3.0 ports will be found widely on smartphones and tablets within the next year or so, according to the USB standards-setting organization. Smartphones and tablets will likely have a MicroUSB port based on USB 3.0 specifications to fit the small size of the devices, said Rahman Ismail, CTO of the USB Implementers Forum, at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month. The ports will allow faster data transfer between mobile devices and hosts such as PCs, some of which already have (...)

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) saw fourth quarter net profit drop 22.5 percent year on year, continuing the previous quarter’s decline as the chip maker’s customers cleared out their inventories. TSMC, however, expects business to pick up this year due to anticipated growth in smartphone and tablet markets, it said Wednesday. In the fourth quarter, net profit reached £683 million, a decrease from £880 million in the same period a year earlier. Revenue for the fourth quarter was (...)

SuperSpeed USB-enabled device shipments are on a fast track and will surpass one billion in 2014, up from 70 million in 2011, according to In-Stat. As the number of CE devices and their capabilities continue to evolve and converge, many require significantly more bandwidth to provide the quality interactive experience users have come to expect. SuperSpeed USB brings significant performance enhancements to the ubiquitous USB standard, while remaining compatible with the billions of (...)

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of memory chips, planned to build a semiconductor plant in China to produce NAND flash memory chips based on 10- nanometer class technology, the economy ministry said Wednesday. According to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Samsung submitted an application for the factory construction to the ministry on Dec. 6, before getting approval Wednesday. The ministry made the decision after holding two meetings of the industrial technology security (...)