Sector: Technology Hardware and Equipment

With gold prices surging in recent years, the semiconductor industry has been increasingly replacing the precious metal with the more affordable copper in the wire bonding process, leading to huge savings in the cost of manufacturing a chip.

China Mobile, the world's biggest telecom carrier by subscribers, said on Wednesday it is negotiating with Apple to carry the popular iPhone in China. 

Shares in Sony slumped more than 7 percent to near 32-year lows, as investors doubted t h e Japanese consumer electronics giant has a strategy to fix its loss-making TV business and compete in the smartphone market against Apple and Samsung Electronics. 

Baidu, China's largest search engine, will launch a new smartphone partnership next week, that will see the smartphone use an upgraded version of its mobile operating system, a senior company executive said on Friday.

A California judge tossed out a lawsuit in which the Chinese firm Proview Electronics accused Apple of tricking them into selling the "iPad" name for less than it might have.  

Japan's leading chip maker Toshiba said on Tuesday it expects a 45 percent jump in profits this business year on Tuesday, boosted by robust demand for its flash memory chips used in blockbuster Apple iPhones.

The U.S. economy "looks healthy and is in pretty good shape" compared with other developed countries, despite data showing cooling growth in the first quarter, hedge fund investor Barton Biggs told CNBC Friday

Apple's surprisingly strong performance in China soothed fears that iPhone sales were losing steam, though analysts wondered how long Chief Executive Tim Cook could sustain the company's sizzling growth without a revolutionary new product.

Sony, which once defined Japan’s technological prowess, wowed the world with the Walkman and the Trinitron TV and shocked Hollywood with bold acquisitions like Columbia Pictures, is now in the fight of its life. The NYT reports.

Shares of Sony fell as much as 5 percent to a two-month low on Friday as new CEO Kazuo Hirai's roadmap to revive the iconic consumer electronics maker failed to impress investors who were looking for a more aggressive strategy.

Less than a fortnight into his job as CEO, Kazuo Hirai on Thursday sketched out a revival strategy for Sony built around mobile electronics - phones, games and cameras - and a medical business with annual sales of $1.2 billion. 

Shares of Sony and Sharp plunged on Wednesday after the TV makers flagged a combined 900 billion yen ($11 billion) in full-year net losses, highlighting the crumbling of earnings in Japan's once-mighty electronics industry.

Sony forecast a record $6.4 billion net loss for the business year just ended, its fourth straight year of losses and double earlier forecasts, inflated by writing off deferred tax assets
in the U.S.

Japan's Sony is to cut 10,000 jobs, about 6 percent of its workforce, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Monday, as new CEO Kazuo Hirai looks to steer the electronics and entertainment giant back to profit after four years in the red. 

Half of all U.S. households own at least one Apple product. That’s more than 55 million homes with at least one iPhone, iPad, iPod or Mac computer, according to CNBC's All-America Survey.