Finance

The SEMI book-to-bill was 1:03, the highest monthly ratio since August and up from the o.99 ratio of December.

Imec and Globalfoundries are to join forces to address critical challenges in radio architecture design in multiband, multimode mobile radios and ultra-low power (ULP) wireless devices.

Freescale which has been spun-out, sold and IPO’d twice in the last decade is now up for sale again, reports Bloomberg.

Inventive companies are failing to claim tax reductions, claims R&D accountancy firm Kingly Brookes. In particular, they are not taking advantage of Patent Box, part of the Government’s growth agenda. “The aim of the Patent Box is to provide an additional incentive for companies to retain and commercialise existing patents and to develop new innovative patented products,” said the Government. ...

Mouser has signed a global distribution deal with design specialist Digilent, a subsidiary of National Instruments.

ARM is finding mobile OEMs “bemused” by Intel’s contra-revenues scheme by which mobile OEMs are paid to take Intel chips.

ARM had Q4 revenues of $357 million up 18% on Q4 2013 for full year revenues in 2014 of $1.292.6 million up 16% on 2013. The profit before tax for Q4 was $118 million, up,25% on Q4 2013 and full year profit was $411 million up 13% on 2013. “In Q4 and throughout 2014 ARM has seen strong licence revenue ...

The deal struck between Qualcomm and China may have other companies in other countries pushing for similar terms.

Silicon wafer area shipments increased 11% in 2014 on 2013, reports SEMI, though silicon wafer revenues increased by only 1%. Silicon wafer area shipments in 2014 totalled 10,098 million square inches (MSI), up from the 9,067 million square inches shipped during 2013. The previous market high for silicon area shipments was 9,370 MSI in 2010. Revenues totalled $7.6 billion slightly ...

Qualcomm is reported by Reuters as being likely to settle its China anti-trust dispute by paying $1 billion and reducing its royalties by a third.