Performance comparisons of Via Technologies' Nano processor and Intel's Atom chip conducted by several hardware-enthusiast sites Tuesday confirmed what many industry observers have long suspected: the Taiwanese processor company has produced a chip that outperforms Intel's offering for low-cost computers.

Alcatel-Lucent's CEO Patricia Russo plans to step down before the end of the year, and Chairman Serge Tchuruk will quit on Oct. 1. Russo will stay on until the board finds a replacement, the company said Tuesday.

The effects of tough price competition in the electronics and cell phone businesses hit Sony's profits during the April to June quarter, it said Tuesday.

The worldwide PC market grew at a healthy 15.3 percent in the second quarter but the weak economy means tough times and possibly a wave of consolidation may lie ahead for PC makers, according to surveys released Wednesday.

Stocks of the new iPhone 3G at Apple Inc.'s retail stores continue to dwindle, with just 26% of the company's outlets showing they have devices to sell Wednesday.

Microsoft is meeting with AOL executives Wednesday to talk about the two companies combining AOL and Microsoft's online division, according to a news report.

The chairman and CEO of United Microelectronics (UMC), the second-largest contract chip maker in the world, announced his resignation on Wednesday, with the company immediately naming his replacements.

IBM will invest $1.5 billion to boost its semiconductor manufacturing and research efforts in New York State, the company announced on Tuesday.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has told Microsoft executives that the company's search advertising deal with Google would reduce the Internet search market from two poles to one, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith told U.S. lawmakers Tuesday.

The retail price of text messaging while roaming should initially be capped at close to ?0.11 (US$0.17) per message, but then fall toward a long-term goal of around ?0.04 per message, the European Commissioner for the Information Society said Tuesday, unveiling plans to regulate the market for mobile phone messaging in Europe.

Makers of the software used to connect computers on the Internet collectively released software updates Tuesday to patch a serious bug in one of the Internet's underlying protocols, the Domain Name System (DNS).

Samsung Electronics is mass producing solid-state drives with a 128G-byte capacity, and will begin production of a 256G-byte product later this year, the company said Wednesday.

Try telling Hiroyuki Sano that the iPhone is just another cell phone. The 24-year old college student from Nagoya began on Tuesday what will become a 73-hour wait outside the outlet of Japanese carrier Softbank that will be the first in Japan to begin selling the iconic handset on Friday morning.

Mozilla's big plan on Tuesday to set a world record for downloads with the Firefox 3 browser hit a snag when its Web site would not work properly.

Google is heading to the PlayStation Portable and will have a place on the handheld's Cross Media Bar (XMB) menu, Sony said Tuesday.

Two U.S. Congressmen on Wednesday accused China of hacking their office computers, possibly compromising information on Chinese dissidents, the Congressmen and news reports said.

Vodafone Group CEO Arun Sarin will step down from the top job at the mobile operator in July, the company said Tuesday.

Europe's top Internet security agency, ENISA, called Tuesday for new legislation to police social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Via Technologies released the hardware design for a low-cost laptop with WiMax support under an open-source license on Tuesday, a move intended to make customization easier and shorten design cycles for system makers.

Microsoft launched a comparative shopping feature in its Live Search engine on Wednesday. The service offers consumers a rebate on purchases made through the site, a scheme that could lure shoppers from Google and Yahoo.