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Nokia begins construction on Vietnamese production facility
In keeping with Elop's focus on Asia-based production, Nokia's just broken ground on a new manufacturing facility in Vietnam. The site, located in the country's Bac Ninh province, spans over 17 hectacres and is slated to begin production of mobile devices when it's completed in early 2013. The move marks a shift in strategy for the Finnish company, eyeing unmet demand for smartphones in the region, an area it's deemed a "high growth [economy]." In addition to supplying that emerging market with its portfolio of products, the new plant will also help to create job opportunities for locals -- a welcome turn of fortune given Espoo's recent track record of worldwide layoffs. You can check out the presser below for additional bits surrounding its newly minted Vietnamese arm.
TSMC begins construction of new $9.3b foundry, wants to sate our constant hunger for chips
TSMC might not necessarily be a household name, but the product of its labors tends to be all over home electronics. Aiming to keep that trend going, the Taiwanese chipmaker has just broken ground on its third 300mm wafer plant, located in Taichung's Central Taiwan Science Park. The new Fab 15 will have a capacity of over 100,000 wafers per month -- earning it the prestige of being described as a Gigafab -- and once operational it'll create 8,000 new skilled jobs in the area. Semiconductors built there will also be suitably modern, with 40nm and 28nm production facilities being installed, and lest you worry about such trivial things as the environment, TSMC says it's doing a few things to minimize the foundry's energy usage and greenhouse gas emission. Then again, if you're going to spend nearly $10 billion on something, would you expect anything less?
Sprint to announce 'groundbreaking new device' (HTC Supersonic?) tomorrow
Sprint Premier customers are being treated to a rather tantalizing account alert tonight: "Visit us tomorrow for an exciting announcement about a groundbreaking new device." No other details provided, but if we had to make an educated guess, we'd say all signs are pointing towards HTC's Supersonic, the long-rumored WiMAX smartphone with a 4.3-inch screen and Android 2.1 with Sense UI. A 4G device would certainly fit the billing as "groundbreaking," and we've already heard of plans to unveil the phone at CTIA, which officially kicks off tomorrow. A web chat transcript found on the Sprint Community seems to corroborate, but we can't at this point verify the validity of the screen capture. You can view the entirety of the purported web chat after the break. If we do wake up tomorrow to a shiny, large-screened WiMAX phone, care to take bets on what Sprint CEO Dan Hesse is gonna talk up in his Wednesday keynote? [Thanks, Jackson R and Aggrey J]
