STAMFORD, CT – Worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment spending is projected to total $34.6 billion in 2013, down 8.5% from 2012, says Gartner. The firm says capital spending will decrease 6.8% in 2013, due to diminishing 28nm investment from a softening in the mobile phone market.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Aided by a state grant, Firstronic plans to add 110 workers over the next 30 months to its site here as part of a major expansion project. The contract electronics assembler this week learned it won a $300,000 grant to expand its 35,000 sq. ft. site.

SANTA CLARA, CA -- Agilent Technologies will split into two publicly traded companies, one focus on life sciences, diagnostics and applied markets and the other on electronic measurement products. The breakup is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2014.

ATLANTA -- With five days to go before the conference start, registration for PCB West is up 23% over last year, conference organizers announced. Advance registration for the trade show exhibits is also up more than 15%, UP Media Group said.

BOULDER, CO -- XetaWave, a local supplier of radios for industrial and military applications, plans to invest $7 million in a new plant and pull manufacturing in-house. The three-year-old company will relocate to a 24,000 sq. ft. facility in Broomfield, CO, where it will begin electronics assembly operations.

LAS VEGAS – Peter Diamandis, a leading authority on commercial space travel, will give the opening keynote at IPC Apex Expo here next March.

ENDICOTT, NY – Endicott Interconnect Technologies’ unsecured creditors could make a bid to buy the bankrupt printed circuit board fabricator at auction, a new report says.

BANNOCKBURN, IL – The world market for printed circuit boards reached nearly $60 billion in 2012, up 1.7% year-over-year, says IPC.

NEUNKIRCHEN, GERMANY -- Neways Electronics has been forced to cease all production activities at its German subsidiary following a major fire that gutted the facility. The contract electronics assembler says the blaze at Neways Electronics Kassel occurred Friday evening and resulted in no injuries.

HELSINKI -- Scanfil has raised its assessed revenue and profit outlook for this year, the contract manufacturer said.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In today’s computers, moving data to and from main memory consumes so much time and energy that microprocessors have their own small, high-speed memory banks, known as “caches,”  which store frequently used data. Traditionally, managing the caches has required  fairly simple algorithms that can be hard-wired into the chips.

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL -- SigmaTron today swung to a July quarter profit on an 18% year-over-year jump in revenues. The electronics manufacturing services company reported revenues of $56.2 million for its first quarter of fiscal 2014, which ended July 31.