“Proximity payments based on NFC technology are clearly on the rise – and payment solutions with smart wearables will accelerate this trend,” says Infineon’s Thomas Rostek.

Read full article: Infineon enables NFC payment ring

My vision for post-Brexit UK – as an off-shore sweat-shop for non-European companies to access the Continental market without troublesome regulation, high taxes or employee protection – is coming on apace, Ed confides to his diary. Initial talks with the big US tech companies make it clear what they need from us. Amazon wants a …

Read full article: Ed’s Vision

Renesas is reported by the Nikkei to be buying Intersil for $3 billion, about $1 billion more than its current market cap. The deal could be finalised in a couple of weeks. This weekend Renesas said that foreign acquisitions are one of the options it is considering. Intersil is not denying the reports, but not …

Read full article: Renesas may buy Intersil

Cambridge Innovation Capital plc (CIC), the 13 year-old Cambridge University investment initiative, has raised £75 million of new capital giving it a total fund of £95 million to invest. CIC was founded by ARM and Lansdown Partners in 2003 with an initial capital of £50 million. With Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation arm of the University, …

Read full article: Cambridge fund raises £75m

Uber rival Lyft is reported to be up for sale but no one’s buying. Apparently the company has been offered to Google, Apple, Microsoft and GM which is an investor. Last time it had a funding round Lyft got a valuation of $5.5 billion but an Uber exec told Bloomberg that it’s not worth more …

Read full article: Lyft for sale

RFEL the Isle of Wight imaging specialist, is to announce an HD-SDI and Generic Vehicle Architecture (GVA) compliant military driver vision aid.

Read full article: RFEL to launch military driver vision aid

Turmoil in the China mobile phone market in Q2 saw Xiaomi’s shipments fall 38% y-o-y and its y-o-y market share down from 16% to 9.5%, reports IDC. Similarly, Apple saw a y-o-y slump of 32% and a y-o-y market share decline from 12% to 88%. Benefitting were Huawei, OPPO and VIVO whose shipments and market …

Read full article: Turmoil in China handset market hits Qualcomm

One of the Korean DRAM suppliers has had to scrap between 30k and 50k wafers, reports Digitimes. No reason for the scrappage has been reported. However DRAM prices have been falling since October 2014, according to DRAMeXchange,, and the memory industry has been known to suffer production problems when prices are bad. There was an …

Read full article: “Scrapped” Wafers Could Boost DRAM Prices

An MIT spin-out is preparing to commercialise a novel re-chargable lithium metal battery that it claims will double capacity.

Read full article: MIT spin-out proposes Lithium metal anodes for Li-ion

The founding, and recently retired, CEO of Cypress, T.J.Rodgers, prided himself on the rigour of his interview techniques for recruits. In his book No-Excuses Management, Rodgers explains a code which Cypress interviewers adopted to let eachother share their impressions of candidates while they were interviewing them. The code for when they found a star candidate …

Read full article: Fishing At Cypress