Earnings

A former senior IBM executive pleaded guilty on Monday to securities fraud in a case that has also reached the executive ranks at high-tech giants Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

Robert Moffat, once thought to be a candidate for chief executive at IBM, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and one count of securities fraud at a Manhattan federal court, according to the Associated Press. He will face up to six months in prison, based on federal sentencing guidelines.

Moffat, 53, provided confidential information about a reorganization at chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, among other confidential … Read more

Like the iPhone, Apple stands to make a greater profit on the iPad when consumers choose models with more memory, according to an estimate released by iSuppli on Wednesday.

The $729 version of Apple's iPad is estimated to carry a bill of materials (BOM) and manufacturing cost of $287.15, making it the most profitable iPad model, according to iSuppli. The iPad is expected to go on sale as early as next month.

The firm did not have an iPad in hand when doing its analysis but based the virtual teardown on an in-house cost model that includes commodity components that are used across many devices.

Though the estimate does not account for non-hardware costs, as the price of different models increases, other costs will stay the same, according to Francis Sideco, an analyst at iSuppli. "Regardless of the configuration, software and licensing is going to stay the same. The only thing that's going to change are the hardware costs and primarily the memory," Sideco said in an interview.

That memory-based pricing scheme has become standard practice for Apple when pricing its iPhone and iPod, for example. For the iPad, the 32GB model will be the most profitable, costing only $29.50 more to produce than the 16GB versions, but the retail price gap is $100, iSuppli said. After the display, the NAND flash memory is expected to be the most expensive item. In the mid-range 3G model, the 32GB of NAND accounts for 21.4 percent of the total BOM, iSuppli said. … Read more

Micron Technology is beefing up its flash memory chip portfolio by acquiring Numonyx, one the largest makers of flash in the world.

Micron and Numonyx said Tuesday that they have reached an agreement whereby Micron will acquire Numonyx in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $1.27 billion.

Numonyx was created by Intel and STMicroelectronics back in 2008 and combined Intel's NOR flash memory business and STMicro's NAND flash business.

Micron is the largest memory chip manufacturer in the U.S., and Geneva-based Numonyx is the world's largest supplier of NOR flash--which has different applications than NAND … Read more

A former Intel executive pleaded guilty on Monday to providing insider information to Galleon Group's founder, Raj Rajaratnam.

The case revolves around Rajaratnam, who founded the Galleon Group, a New York-based hedge fund that managed $7 billion in funds. In total, 22 people have been charged with criminal or civil charges by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Ten, including the Intel executive, have pleaded guilty to date.

Rajiv Goel, a former Intel treasury department executive, has admitted to providing Rajaratnam, in 2007, details about Intel's earnings before the information was publicly available. He also told Rajaratnam … Read more

The apology from Toyota President Akio Toyoda is being interpreted by the U.S. media as a uniquely Japanese thing.

Really?

Let me say up front that I lived in Japan for 10 years. I made every effort to become proficient in Japanese, as it was crucially important for me, as a journalist, to be as fluent in the language as possible. That does not make me a Japanese expert, (as others who have spent much less time there claim to be, by the way) but language is the best window on a culture--and it does give me some extra … Read more

Salacious charges in a federal case against Henry T. Nicholas III, co-founder and former CEO of chip giant Broadcom, have been dropped, bringing the scandal-packed case to a close.

On Thursday, a judge threw out the remaining charges against Nicholas, granting a request by the prosecutor to dismiss drug-trafficking counts, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. This comes after the judge dismissed criminal charges connected to stock-option backdating against Nicholas and co-founder Henry Samueli.

Nicholas was indicted in 2008 on charges that he had provided cocaine and Ecstasy to friends and business associates. One of the more … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices posted a fourth-quarter profit of $1.18 billion, its first profit in three years, largely due to a massive settlement with Intel.

The $1.178 billion profit, or $1.52 per share, beat the analyst consensus estimate that had projected AMD to record a loss of 18 cents per share. In the same quarter last year, AMD lost $1.4 billion, or $2.36 per share.

The second largest global supplier of processors for PCs posted revenue of $1.646 billion, an increase of 42 percent compared with the same period a year ago. This beat analyst … Read more

Samsung Electronics and Rambus said Tuesday that they have reached an agreement settling all claims between them and the licensing of Rambus' patent portfolio for all Samsung semiconductor products.

Under the agreement, Samsung will initially pay Rambus $200 million. In addition, the South Korean electronics company will make quarterly payments of about $25 million over five years and agree to purchase $200 million worth of Rambus stock. In total, about $900 million.

The agreement includes a perpetual fully paid-up license to certain current dynamic random access memory (DRAM) products. DRAM chips are used as the main memory for PCs.

In addition, Samsung and Rambus have signed a memorandum of understanding covering a new generation of memory technologies which combines Samsung's and Rambus' memory technologies. Rambus' expertise lies in high-performance memory interfaces.

The two companies will initially focus on graphics and mobile memory solutions and will further review a potential collaboration on server and high-speed NAND flash memories, the companies said.

The settlement came just as Rambus was set to go to trial against Samsung, Hynix Semiconductor, and Micron Technology.

Rambus has a long and convoluted history of lawsuits and legal action.… Read more

Intel's plan for growth in 2010 can be summed up in one esoteric term: 32 nanometer. That's where Intel's chips are going across the board--laptops, servers, and even new markets like smartphones, according to chief executive Paul Otellini and chief financial officer Stacy Smith, who spoke during the company's fourth-quarter earnings conference call Thursday afternoon.

Intel reported earnings Thursday that were unusually strong, blowing past even upbeat Wall Street forecasts.

And what's the secret of Intel's success? Process technology. Intel is in the midst of moving the bulk of its chips from a 45-nanometer … Read more