EL SEGUNDO, CA – Third-quarter global PC shipments were up 7% sequentially and 10.3% year-over-year to 88.1 million units, according to iSuppli Corp.

Shipments for all three major types of PCs – desktops, notebooks and entry-level servers – rose on both a sequential and a year-over-year basis in the third quarter.

Desktop PCs generated the strongest sequential growth, with shipments up 11% sequentially, reflecting relatively strong demand in the corporate sector.

In contrast, mobile PC shipments rose at more tepid 4% sequential growth rate, and up a more impressive 15% from a year earlier. Those rates, however, were down from 41% and 42% increases in the second and first quarters, respectively, due to consumer confidence issues, says the firm.

iSuppli predicts global PC shipments will continue to rise in the fourth quarter, with a mid-single-digit increase over fourth-quarter 2009 shipments.

TAIPEI – Taiwan's exports swelled 21.9% year-over-year to $24.2 billion in October on strong demand for electronics.

JASPER, IN – EMS firm Kimball International said its first-quarter 2011 profit dropped 74% year-over-year to $460,000.

Total sales increased 7% year-over-year to $294 million.

The firm’s electronics manufacturing business, however, recorded losses of $250,000, down 13% year-over-year, attributable to labor and employee cost increases. Sales for the segment totaled $177.9 million.

The company had total assets of $642 million at the end of the quarter.

WASHINGTON, DC – The Semiconductor Industry Association projects record global semiconductor sales of $300.5 billion in 2010, up 32.8%.

SHANGHAI – China next year will increase export tonnages for silver, tungsten and antimony, but cut the quota for tin from 21,000 tonnes in 2010 to 18,900 tonnes in 2011.

ST. LOUIS -- LaBarge reported record quarterly earnings and income for the period ended Oct. 3 on broad-based customer demand.

NORTH BILLERICA, MA — BTU International broke even for its third quarter, reversing a net loss from last year on stronger electronics sales.

CAMBRIDGE, MA – The printed electronics market is forecast to reach more than $50 billion over the next 10 years, with photovoltaics, display technologies and logic (memory and transistors) representing the largest segments.

Printed electronics’ impact could be big on everything from low-cost solution-processed thin-film photovoltaics and OLED lighting, to e-paper displays and thin-film batteries, IDTechEx says.

Investments are being made in process technologies such as deposition of small molecules in a vacuum, OLED and LED production facility and novel material substrates, the firm added.

ARLINGTON, VA -- The pending merger of the National Electronics Distributors Association and the Electronic Components Association is on track to take place in January, the trade groups said.

RICHARDSON, TX – Asset InterTech has partnered with Flextronics to accelerate the adoption of IEEE P1687 Internal JTAG (IJTAG).

The Flextronics Center of Excellence in Austin will collaborate with Asset on the development of tools supporting the standard for Asset’s ScanWorks platform for embedded instruments.

The firms also will undertake joint marketing activities on the lifecycle value of deploying validation and test strategies based on the standard. They both have plans to conduct seminars, author joint white papers, present technical papers on IJTAG technology, and compile application notes. 

Once ratified next year, the standard will specify an open architecture and interfacing mechanisms for instrumentation embedded into semiconductor chips, simplifying the use of these embedded instruments to validate, test and debug chips, circuit boards and systems.

It will enable efficient use of embedded instruments throughout a product’s lifecycle, including circuit board validation during design, board test in manufacturing, and maintenance diagnostics in the field.

LAGUNA, PHILLIPPINES – IMI and its subsidiary Speedy-Tech Electronics have obtained in a US patent describing a self-coupled driver used in dual-switch forward power converter.

A dual-switch forward power converter, and a method of operating the same, employs a self-coupled driver to achieve higher efficiency, lower part count and component cost.

The transformer has two serially connected primary windings, with the first winding connected to a first switching transistor, which is biased by a pulse controller; the second winding couples the voltage across the first winding to bias the second switching transistor.

The circuit on the primary side of the transformer comprises means of dissipating magnetization current, and the circuit on the secondary side comprises a rectifier and a low-pass filter.

The US Patent no. is 7787265.

BANGKOK -- Fabrinet reported September quarter GAAP net income  was $15.2 million, up 146% from last year.