Semiconductor giants NEC and Renesas today said they would merge in a deal likely to change the electronics industry. The two plan to finish talks by July that would create a single company by next April. Such a deal would give them roughly $13 billion in combined yearly sales and would make it the single-largest Japanese company building processing technology.

Observers view the merger as the result of financial pressure created by the economy, which is threatening significant losses for the separate companies. Both are profitable but under threat as fewer chips get sold with reduced demand for home electronics.

The deal would also create the world’s third-largest semiconductor company behind Intel and Samsung and is likely to influence the choice of mobile processors, storage and other parts normally made by now smaller companies, such as SanDisk and Toshiba. Hitachi and Mitsubishi already share joint control of Renesas.

Samsung phone also supports the full HSPA spec for 3G and carries Bluetooth 2.0, GPS and Wi-Fi for its peripherals, mapping and networking. O2 Germany will be the first carrier to pick up the i7500 and will launch it in June with a one-month exclusive in the country until July. Whether or not it will come to the US isn’t specified, though Samsung has previously said an Android phone would reach the country today became the second company ever to formally launch a smartphone based on Google’s Android platform. The i7500 is one of the thinnest full touchscreen phones at 0.47 inches deep and is also billed as one of the most advanced: it centers on a 3.2-inch, 320×480 AMOLED screen that not only provides much better color accuracy and brightness but also helps extend battery life. A 5-megapixel camera with autofocusing and flash gives it the most advanced photography of any Android phone, while it’s also the first with the OS to have 8GB of built-in memory on top of a microSDHC card slot. The Android 1.5-basedsometime in spring. It supports 3G on the 1,700MHz band needed for use on T-Mobile’s US network.

The launch of the Samsung phone is crucial to Android as it becomes the first phone on the platform from a top 5 phone manufacturer, increasing the potential for market share. Previous phones have been made only by HTC and have been limited to T-Mobile. Other carriers are only getting the option of Android devices in May with the release of the HTC Magic on Vodafone, TIM and other networks. Through the limitation, Android has been growing half as quickly as iPhones in terms of data use and has just a small fraction of the actual market within the the US as well as abroad.

Motorola has a new W series phone for you, the W7. The handset is a slider phone capable to deal with China Unicom’s future 3G network. That’s where the phone was spotted so far and we assume that’s where it’s going to be available initially.

The W7 will bring you the following features:

• 2.2 inch QVGA display
• Music player
• FM radio
• 2MP camera
• Secondary camera for video calls
• MicroSD card support

The phone will be available in China in May but we have no idea when the phone will come to other markets too.

It was just yesterday that we found out how Apple and Verizon are cooking up a new iPhone for 2010 ready to run on Big Red’s CDMA network. And now this: Microsoft and Verizon are working on an iPhone killer. Or did everyone misunderstood the whole Apple and Verizon thing? According to certain sources Verizon is in talks with Microsoft about that whole iPhone killer. Codenamed project “Pink” the phone will be designed by Microsoft and it will come with lots of multimedia features and, of course, a large touchscreen. The new phone is going to run on Windows Mobile but it’s going to be a tweaked version. So what say you Microsoft? How are you going to explain to everyone else that’s using your OS the new phone? After all everyone knows that Microsoft will not develop an own phone right?

For all you Storm users under contract with Verizon, there’s a new OS that’s going to arrive soon. In a recent internal Verizon memo OS version 4.7.0.141 is mentioned. The memo also says that the new OS is here and it should be available soon to all Verizon customers that own a BlackBerry Storm 9530. RIM is apparently working on an even bigger version, 4.7.0.201 for the same phone but until such version is available you should try out Verizon’s update. As always, make sure you backup before you start messing up that RIM phone. And make sure you tell us how you feel about the new OS!

Businesses and companies need all the help that they can get these days and apparently this new solution from Motorola will further aid them in their daily operations. The Motorola FX7400 series provides maximum functionality in a sleek package that is less than half the size of traditional fixed RFID readers, making it ideal for retail stores, offices, and other customer-facing or business environments.

Motorola’s new cost-effective, high-performance fixed RFID reader is built on a new platform that supports Gen 2 technology and is capable of hosting third-party, customer-driven embedded applications to meet the growing requirements of enterprises.

As a compact, lightweight, unobtrusive RFID reader, the FX7400 can be installed under point-of-sale counters, behind walls or on ceilings – providing an ideal solution for item-level tracking, retail inventory management, file tracking and asset management applications in environments where performance and a small footprint are critical.

For retailers, this new reader will help improve employee productivity, reduce cycle count times and decrease out-of-stock items in order to improve operations and increase sales. The FX7400 series complements Motorola’s existing portfolio of industrial solutions and opens a new window of opportunity for retailers and businesses to implement RFID. Motorola intends to broaden this business-class portfolio with additional reader options in the future.

The Motorola FX7400 fixed RFID reader will be available through Motorola PartnerSelect members and Motorola sales. It is expected to be available in the U.S. and Europe in the third quarter of 2009 and globally by the end of the year.

FCC, that ever resourceful authority giving us insights on what to expect in the near future, has revealed a cell phone from Motorola destined for Verizon, the A4500 World Phone.   Details revealed indicate a candybar form factor with a QWERTY keypad, WiFi, fingerprint scanner, microSD expansion, EVDO data speeds, stereo Bluetooth, and quad-band GSM world roaming capability. The Motorola A4500 will be a smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1 and will also have a 2-megapixel camera, which seems to be added just for the kicks, we guess.

No news from either Motorola or Verizon’s front yet about the A4500, but we will surely tell you when that pops up.

This might be just something else tossed at us from the rumor mill, but if we tell you that this little morsel of info was spotted coded onto LG’s own website, would that add some credibility to it? Well, may be it would.  The folks over at MobileSyrup did some diving on LG’s site and came across an xml document that is named “LG-GT500R-Rogers.xml,” which could  be a dead giveaway that the GT500R (R for Rogers?), which is scheduled for a T-Mobile opening this summer, will be hopping the Canadian boundary and end up with Rogers some time soon.  The specs may be a little bland for some, with its 5-megapixel camera, 3G support, GPS, and a 3-inch touchscreen display to name a few, but then, they aren’t such a big disappointment either.

Anybody care to wager who will get it first? Rogers or T-Mobile? Americans or Canadians?