Is has been reported that Hewlett-Packard will buy Compaq for an estimated $47.5 billion. Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have reported the deal, citing people close to the negotiations, but both companies have declined comment. Compaq Australia said it could not confirm or deny the reports.

Mayer Krieg and REC Electronics have merged and will trade under the name of Mayer Krieg. The merger creates a components and subsystems vendor valued at over $50 million. However, in the merger 10% of the workforce will lose their jobs.

Intel is selling three faster models of its Celeron chips for inexpensive PCs. The Celerons run at speeds of 1.1 GHz, 1 GHz and 950 MHz. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have been competing over sales in less expensive PCs. With slowing economic growth, businesses and consumers are buying more of the cheaper systems. Advanced Micro previously sold the fastest low-end chip at 1 GHz.

Samsung Electronics has completed the development of a 40-inch TFT-LCD.

Toshiba will cut 20,000 jobs from its workforce of 190,000 to cope with deteriorating earnings in its semiconductor business, and it is also reported that Hitachi is about to cut 20,000 jobs from its 340,000 workforce because of falling world demand for chips and other IT products.

Through Associate Professor Sam Reisenfeld of the Engineering Faculty, UTS is playing a major role in developing an electronic package that performs specific tasks for Australia’s FedSat satellite to be launched next year from Japan.

65 employees in Lucent's Australian operation have lost their jobs as part of the company's plans to halve its workforce.

The two companies intend to accelerate the introduction of high performance, low power microchips for 3G mobile phones.

The Queensland Government's Information and Communication Technology SME Taskforce on Government Procurement will identify impediments and what might be done to use government procedures to assist the development of Queensland SMEs.

The two companies have formed an alliance to market field programmable analogue array (FPAA) products and technology in Japan.

NSW based NDT have been selected to be Australian distributor for Zibra, who produce narrow diameter borescopes and fiber-scopes, rod lens scopes, customs optics, as well as rigid, semirigid, and flexible microborescopes.

Increasing consumer confidence could lift the downturn surrounding the electronics market.

Protel International has been renamed Altium Limited. As of August, all corporate, sales, support and promotional activities will take place under the Altium name, and all operating subsidiaries will also be renamed.

Within Australia and New Zealand, Dewetron’s products will be distributed by Metromatics.

Autron has signed an agreement with SembCorp Logistics that will see the latter provide supply chain management (SCM) support to both Autron and the electronics manufacturing industry.