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| Ford suspending dividend and secured addition line of credit |
3/23/2020 |
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Ford Motor Co. withdrew its financial guidance for the year Thursday. The cash Ford saves will be used to offset the impact on working capital due to factory shutdowns. On Wednesday Ford and other automakers announced that they will close all of their North American factories in the coming days.
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| Apple is moving its tablet towards a latop computer |
3/20/2020 |
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Apple’s new iPad brings PC-like trackpad capabilities for the first time, as the company seeks to make its tablet even more like a laptop computer. Apple says the trackpad will offer more precision than fingers in selecting text and switching between apps.
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| Chinese factories to run short of advanced semiconductor parts |
3/20/2020 |
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Chinese manufacturers assemble more than 80% of smartphones for Apple, Samsung and other brands, half of the world’s personal computers and a big share of home appliances and other goods. But they need U.S. processor chips and other high-value components.
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| Auto manufacturers to close plants and idle 150,000 |
3/20/2020 |
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Detroit's three automakers said their closures would begin this week, while Honda and Toyota will start next week. Nissan will close U.S. plants starting Friday. Closings will run from a few days to over two weeks,
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| Samsung see memory prices recovering while smartphone slumps |
3/19/2020 |
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“The global smartphone market was expected to turn to growth this year, but with virus showing signs of being prolonged, the smartphone market is contracting. But 5G smartphone demand is expected to rise,” Koh Dong-jin, president of Samsung’s mobile and network business, told the annual general meeting in Seoul.
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| Memory prices jumped last week |
3/19/2020 |
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Q2 server DRAM ASPs will rise 20% q-o-q and Q2 SSD prices will rise 10-15% q-o-q, says DRAMeXchange as a result of increased demand for cloud services used for teleworking caused by coronavirus-driven home-working.
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| People start losing jobs to the virus |
3/19/2020 |
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Furloughs and job cuts, from dog walkers, to oilfield workers, have begun. Governments around the world are pushing drastic countermeasures to help workers, particularly those who live paycheck to paycheck.
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| Amazon to hire 100,000 to keep up with more people shopping online. |
3/18/2020 |
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Amazon said this weekend that a surge of orders is putting its operations under pressure. It warned shoppers that it could take longer than the usual two days to get packages. It also said it was sold out of many household cleaning supplies and is working to get more in stock.
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| SMIC is on new 14nm moving towards 7nm |
3/18/2020 |
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During SMIC’s recent fiscal year report conference, the company’s co-CEO Liang Mong Song revealed a new version of the 14nm process the company calls N+1. A SMIC spokesman told EE Times China that N+1 was expected to go into limited production in the fourth quarter.
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| Samsung to mass produce 5th Generation NAND |
3/18/2020 |
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The fifth-generation V-NAND stacks more than 90 layers of 3-dimensional charge trap flash (CTF) cells in a pyramid structure, with microscopic channel holes drilled vertically throughout. It reduces the height of each cell layer, minimizes crosstalk between cells and improves data storage capacity,
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| Gasoline prices continue to dip |
3/17/2020 |
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Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey said Sunday that gas prices could continue to fall as demand shrinks amid the coronavirus pandemic.
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| U.S. internet infustructure sufficient for work at home |
3/17/2020 |
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Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia on Saturday applauded announcements by several major U.S. internet providers for taking measures — including the temporary suspension of data caps and free broadband for 60 days for households with children who lack it.
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| China reports 20.5% reduction on retail activities |
3/17/2020 |
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Retail sales fell 20.5% from a year ago after shopping malls and other businesses were closed in late January, government data showed Monday. Factory output declined by a record 13.5% after the Lunar New Year holiday was extended to keep manufacturing employees at home.
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| Broadcom to retain its radio-frequency wireless chip business |
3/16/2020 |
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“After careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that continuing to invest in and operate our wireless asset will create the most value for our business and for our shareholders,” Broadcom CEO Hock Tan told investors Thursday during the company’s earnings call.
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| EU funds project to develop mobile diagnostic device to identify cardiovascular diseases |
3/16/2020 |
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Led by research institute imec and Ghent University, together with Medtronic and other project partners, the H2020 project, InSiDe, will look at a path to commercializing and manufacturing the prototype device built as part of the previous CARDIS (CARdiovascular disease Detection with Integrated Silicon Photonics) project. The CARDIS project, which received around €3.6 million funding under H2020, resulted in lab validation in 2017 of a first demonstrator mobile, low-cost silicon photonics integrated laser vibrometer.
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| Silicon Labs to acquire Indian chip company, Redpine Signals |
3/16/2020 |
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The company expects $20 million in incremental revenue on an annualized basis for FY2020, and targeting $100 million revenue by 2023 for all its wireless products for the IoT. The other is to rely on the India-based team to accelerate its product development for Wi-Fi 6.
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| U.S. congress sets another step to keep UK from adopting Huawei 5G |
3/6/2020 |
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Republican senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio proposed legislation requiring the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to review Britain’s place on the foreign investment “whitelist,” which exempts some Australian, Canadian and UK companies from increased U.S. scrutiny of their foreign investments.
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| India to backstop its electronics sector by airlifting components from China |
3/6/2020 |
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India’s federal technology ministry has asked electronics and smartphone industry lobby groups to draw up a list of components made in China which then can be airlifted, two of the officials said. China is slowly getting back to work after an extended shutdown, but it is still grappling with a range of production and logistics delays.
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| OPEC calls for production cut to boost oil prices |
3/6/2020 |
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OPEC cartel are calling for a deep production cut of 1.5 million barrels per day to support prices that are sagging due to the spread of the coronavirus.The proposal, however, assumes that non-member allies like major producer Russia, who will take up the proposal Friday, will agree to the cuts.
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