In the second quarter of 2009, the value of the total notebook PC market was $30.0 billion, up 10% but down 5% over the year, according to a new report by DisplaySearch.

Texas Instruments has opened a manufacturing facility in Richardson, Texas, believed to be the world's only production facility to use 300 mm silicon wafers to manufacture analog chips.

A partnership between Tokyo Electron (TEL) and Oerlikon Solar will make inroads into the Australian solar market and will introduce thin film photovoltaic technology.

Hitachi High-Technologies and Renesas Technology have agreed to a transfer of the semiconductor manufacturing equipment business of wholly owned Renesas subsidiary, Renesas Eastern Japan Semiconductor, to Hitachi High-Tech Instruments, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi High-Technologies.

Mouser has signed a global distribution agreement with LS Research, a wireless development company.

Taiwan is being recognised as the key manufacturer of ICT products, including personal computers, notebooks, monitors and motherboards, and has cultivated a strong connector industry, ranked at three in global production value.

Kontron has acquired Digital-Logic, headquartered near Solothurn in Switzerland.

In its Quarterly LCD Glass Subsctrate Report, DisplaySearch says that TFT LCD glass tightness this year will continue as TFT LCD panel makers are increasing capacity use and demanding more glass substrate from suppliers.

IMEC has combined vapour-phase doping and sub-melt laser annealing to fabricate high-quality, defect-free, ultra-shallow junctions (USJs) with abrupt dopant profile.

In the second quarter of 2009, Asia Pacific continued its downward trend in server shipments with a 17.2% year on year decline, with shipments totaling 323,388 units.

National Semiconductor and SunEdison, a solar energy services provider, have begun field trials to optimise the energy output of solar arrays.

An online technology resource and community for electronic design engineers has been launched at www.element-14.com.

IMEC has launched an industrial affiliation program to focus on the development of GaN technology for both power conversion and solid-state lighting applications.

Demand for tantalum, of which some 75% goes into electronics and aerospace, is, this year, likely to be 40% lower than 2008, according to a report from Roskill Information Services in London.

Digi-Key Corporation has signed an agreement with Fujitsu Microelectronics of America, for the worldwide distribution of FMA's low-power, low-pin-count, 8-bit microcontrollers and digital touch-screen sensor ICs.