Motorola Inc.'s ex-Chief Financial Officer, Paul Liska, said in a lawsuit unsealed Thursday he was fired for warning company officials the 2009 business plan for its mobile devices unit was based on "unsubstantiated and misleading financial forecasts."

Spurred by pent-up electronic system demand and increasing average selling prices, the IC market will register double-digit growth in 2010 and 2011 after beginning to recover in the second half of this year, according to market research firm IC Insights.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology will publish in September a road map for developing standards for tomorrow's smart electric grid, according to the new NIST executive coordinating the effort.

Silicon wafer supplier MEMC Electronic Materials said it expects to report first quarter revenue of about $214 million, which would be a decrease of nearly 50 percent from $425.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has cut three senior analysts and a handful of junior analysts from its North American equity research operation, according to a person familiar with the move.

GPUs, sold in millions to gamers, now have a terrific price/performance ratio for use in EDA simulators.

IBM Corp. and the Electronics and Information Technology Laboratory of the CEA (CEA/LETIi) of France said that they will collaborate on research in semiconductor and nanoelectronics technology.

Demand for brightness improvement films used in TFT LCD backlights is expected to grow by 30 percent year-on-year to 116 million m² in 2009 from 89.6 million m² in 2008 according to market researchers at DisplaySearch (Austin, TX).

Micron Technology Inc. and its Taiwan DRAM partner have rejected a plan to join a state-led memory venture on the island. And in a new twist, Micron and its partner are asking for aid from the Taiwan government.

EMS provider Jabil Circuits Inc. said it has written down most of the more than $700 million in goodwill on its balance sheet as demand for contract manufacturing services fall off and in response to a sharp drop in its market capitalization.

Following Taiwan's labor laws, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) this week said that it issued documents on April 3 to over 200 former employees ''certifying that their employment was terminated due to deteriorating business conditions.''

Design-for-power startup company Docea Power SA (Moirans, France) has said it will attend the DATE (Design Automation and Test Europe) exhibition in Nice, France, taking place April 21 to 23, 2009, and exhibit version 1.1. of its ACEplorer software.

Solar cells currently have two weak points: Efficiency and operational lifetime. While dozens of research teams pursuit the task to improve the conversion efficiency, almost nobody seemed to be interested in the operational lifetime topic. Now this has changed; IMEC partners with Cytec Industries to develop PV devices with extended lifetime.

Solar cells currently have two weak points: Efficiency and operational lifetime. While dozens of research teams pursuit the task to improve the conversion efficiency, almost nobody seemed to be interested in the operational lifetime topic. Now this has changed; IMEC partners with Cytec Industries to develop PV devices with extended lifetime.

A group of researchers claim they have settled a long-standing debate over the source of the unusual electronic properties of silver niobate that potentially has great importance for wireless communications.

Micron Technology's chip plant in Avezzano in the Abruzzo region of Italy seems to have escaped damage following the devastating earthquake in the region earlier this week.

Sun Microsystems has reportedly lost one of its top microprocessor architects, Marc Tremblay, a Sun veteran who was leading the company's next-generation Sparc team now joining Microsoft, the latest in a stream of losses that have sapped Sun's top tech talent.

Solar cell production equipment supplier Amtech Systems said that its workforce has been reduced by 22 percent since its peak on Sept. 30, 2008, and reported preliminary revenue for the fiscal second quarter ended March 31 of $10.5 million.