The Institute for Photovoltaics at the University of Stuttgart has set a record for the highest degrees of efficiency for the production of photovoltaic systems. In a project funded by the Federal Environmental Ministry, success was achieved in manufacturing cells from crystal silicon with almost 22 percent efficiency.

DRAMeXchange has announced that with the climbing commodity DRAM prices, contract price for mainstream DDR3 4GB modules has grown from $17.25 at the beginning of Q1 to $23.5 at the end of March, a 36.2 percent increase. As a result, DRAM industry revenue for 1Q13 remains on par with the previous quarter's figures, a rare occurrence in the traditionally weak Q1.

The global market for smartphone applications processors showed a robust 60 percent year-on-year growth last year at $12.9 billion, with Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, MediaTek and Broadcom capturing the top-five revenue share rankings. On the tablet realm, a significant 83 percent rise was also achieved in 2012 with $2.7 billion in revenue and Apple still leading the pack, followed by Nvidia, Texas Instruments. Both reports were issued by research firm Strategy Analytics.

"The first quarter of 2013 brought the worst quarterly decline in Western Europe since Gartner started tracking PC shipments in this region," said Meike Escherich, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Wide availability of Windows 8-based PCs could not boost consumer PC purchases during the quarter. Although the new Metro-style user interface suits new form factors, users wonder about its suitability for traditional PCs — non-touchscreen desktops and notebooks."

Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are increasingly turning to electronics manufacturing service (EMS) providers to better handle the escalating volumes of electronic content in the medical industry. With opportunities for high-level product assembly and complete build projects expected to increase, the potential for EMS in the medical industry will progress gradually over the next few years.

The worldwide hardcopy peripherals market decreased 9.7% year over year with 25.8 million units shipped in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals Tracker. Shipment value experienced a decline of 5.7% year over year to $14.3 billion. This is the third consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline in worldwide shipment value.

The global market for licensed mobile radio (LMR) infrastructure equipment, installation and system integration services amounted to $2.6 billion, according to a first-of-its-kind study entitled “Licensed Mobile Radio Infrastructure and System Integration” from IMS Research. The worldwide LMR market is forecast to grow every year through at least 2017.